


The Devil Will Be Mine

by Lscholar



Category: Heaven Will Be Mine (Visual Novel), We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Character Study, Crossover, Emotional violence, F/F, Gender Hell, Heavy Angst, Non-Explicit Sexual Content, Only Mostly Metaphorically, Ripping Each Other And Themselves To Pieces, Three Sad Horny Angry Teens At Conversion Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:31:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 36,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16597067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lscholar/pseuds/Lscholar
Summary: Summer Scout Camp fucking sucks. Sassy Saturn, sullen Luna-Terra, and wide-eyed Pluto have sung the boring jesus songs, sharpened their radios, and struggled through the character-building busywork. Now they have one more test: spend twelve hours in the shittiest cabin in the godforsaken woods and pray the devil won't come and fuck them up beyond repair.Their chances aren't looking great.





	1. 6PM - Bonfire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: implied [dubcon, teens exploring bodies], explicit [gender hell, self-harm], the devil.

 

lt’s disgusting.

They’re drenched in sunscreen and bug spray and incense. They look horrible and smell worse and feel even worse than they smell. Nobody who goes to camp ever wants to talk about it, or about the fact that they don’t want to talk about it. What is there even to talk about? The endless sermons? The horrible food? The devil lurking around the cabin in the woods?

Summer Scout Camp fucking sucks.

“summer scout camp fucking sucks” says Saturn. She pops her bubblegum angrily, like she’s trying to make it hurt.

Saturn (♄) is the kind of girl who wears too much eyeshadow and leaves the top three buttons of her Summer Scout Uniform shirt undone. Her hair is shaggy, with too many layers. Saturn always has candy and never shares any of it.

“I guess!” says Pluto.

Pluto (♇) looks like the perfect little cherub he is: round cheeks, soft skin, earnest eyes, bowl cut. He spends his free time reading the bible and cleaning up after everyone else unasked, which meant almost everybody hated him until two nights ago, when he gave the Bonfire Sermon.

Now everybody hates him. He kind of deserves it.

“Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit thee out of My mouth.” says Saturn, “and why’d you agree with me anyway, huh?”

Pluto’s shame is all over his face. He doesn’t really know why; and it was kind of blasphemous for him to say so.

“… Cause camp sucks.” says Luna-Terra, from inside his gray hoodie.

Luna-Terra is very tall. He (♁) doesn’t say a lot and he never takes his hoodie off. He figures Pluto is sad because of Saturn’s disapproval but then he remembers: he doesn’t actually give a shit.

“whoa.” says Saturn. “you guys. we finally all agreed on something! its been like however many weeks its been and we’re finally a real team! go group east wooooo lets get this over with and never see each other again.”

Luna-Terra doesn’t seem to have emotions other than sullen and vaguely pissed off. Saturn kind of respects this but also it really gets on her nerves: who the fuck does he think he is, not lusting after a lewd and nubile schoolgirl like herself! Is he gay or something? Not that she’d mind: guys making out with each other is super hot, and it’s not like that would stop her anyways.

“Really?” says Pluto, who has never been anything with somebody as cool as Luna-Terra. He fumbles his bible, then holds it close to his chest.

“Fuck you. Where’s the bonfire.” says Luna-Terra, in his blunt dull voice. There’s no venom in it. Saturn sort of wishes there was.

Pluto points in what is probably its general direction and Luna-Terra stomps off ahead.

 

+++

 

They’re the last group in, of course. They take the only seat left: a log right up close by the fire and the Bonfire Captain, who has a penchant for asking questions that aren’t questions at all.

“Haha. Group East’s here early!” says the Bonfire Captain. “You have fun making out in the woods?”

“Yes Sir!” says Saturn on reflex, before she can stop herself. The quiet murmur of conversation stops. 

“No.” says Luna-Terra. “Saturn kisses like a dead fish.”

There’s a horrible moment when Pluto doesn’t know what’s going to happen, and then the Bonfire Captain lets out a chuckle, which frees everyone else up to giggle nervously. He throws another handful of incense in the fire. The smell clings to their skin and their hair and their clothes. It’s a different blend tonight: a new and special kind of horrible:

the stubs of devotional candles; wafers, rotting; some personal belongings from a devout deceased churchgoer:

Luna-Terra notices a severe dress, gold-trimmed pages, and what might have once been her hair; cloying chrism, ritually-broken rings,

cheap “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Frankincense” Frankincense-Scented Incense Substitute.

Pluto sits below the log, cross-legged on the patchy grass, looking up through the bonfire at the Captain and the stars. Saturn sits with her legs wide open, which Pluto thinks looks kind of uncomfortable. Luna-Terra slouches.

The young are a difficult mix of useful and expendable. This is the problem that the Summer Scouts were created to solve.

“Everyone having a good time?” says the Bonfire Captain.

“Y—“ says Pluto, because Luna-Terra kicks him just a little bit harder than necessary. Nobody else is, though. All around the fire teens shuffle their feet and mutter something vaguely like assent.

Every single bonfire meeting starts this exact same way. Nobody ever wants to be here, so the Captain pushes harder.

"I said, “ says the Captain, “Is everyone having a Good Time?”

Pluto sits very still.

"I Said,” says the Captain, “Is everyone HAVING A GOOD TIME?”

This time, almost everyone tries. Pluto’s voice comes out a hair over the others; Saturn’s a hair under. Luna-Terra of course says nothing at all.

Satisfied, the Bonfire Captain picks up his guitar, his eyes roving over the seated campers. He shifts his weight a little on his own log.

“Before we sing some songs tonight, I’d like to tell you a story.”

Which (everyone knows) means that a story is going to get told whether any of these kids want to hear it or not. (They don’t.) The captain strums a chord. Pluto can hear just how out of tune the guitar is, but he’s not going to say anything. Not tonight.

“Alright." says the Captain, and slaps his hands down on his knees for emphasis. "When I was a kid, I was not popular. Now I don’t know if you all can believe that, ha ha."

"Ha ha." say the campers in unison. They know how these things go. 

"As a matter of fact," says the Captain, "I only had two friends. I was a bad kid. Me! I had a lot of fun with those two that I regret now. But one day, the two of them went off into the woods and left me behind.”

Saturn looks at the fire, tongues reaching up and out. Luna-Terra looks away, and Pluto looks down at the dirt, or maybe at the backs of his hands.

“And on that day they went,” says the Bonfire Captain, “and they found the Devil.”

He clears his throat and looks at the fire himself for a moment.

“I found them in their wickedness and I took out my radio,” he says, “and I did my god-given duty. See, the LORD God Almighty could reach down from on high and squish the Devil dead like a bug, but that’s not how He works. God made the Devil and set him free on this earth to tempt us, because those who give in are not worthy of His heaven. God in His Mercy gives the Devil to us to destroy.”

The bonfire crackles like rustling paper.

“Some friendships you can keep up. The rest you gotta leave up to God.”

Saturn looks at Luna-Terra and smiles a little. Pluto follows her gaze and can’t help but smile too, nervously.

Luna-Terra is covering one hand with the other like he’s protecting a candle flame, but the candle is an upraised middle finger aimed right at the Bonfire Captain, who can’t possibly see it but who nevertheless says:

“GROUP EAST. Feel like meeting the Devil tonight?”

It’s not a question.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wonder what venus, jupiter, and neptune would be like in space? ehhhhh someone else please write that. this is enough on my plate!


	2. 7PM - Most Holy Frequency

 

“hey loonyyyyyyyyy” says Saturn, from up high on the siren pole. “Pass me a new crystodyne? The connections on this one are all screwed up.”

“Can’t you just rebind it.” Luna-Terra asks.

“yeah.” says Saturn. “want me to do a half-assed job? it’s our turn in the cabin though.”

Luna-Terra opens a battered plastic briefcase and hands Pluto a crystal diode sized for the siren radio.

Of course Pluto is willing to climb. He likes feeling useful, so he hikes one leg, then the other, up onto the ladder which is really just spikes sticking out of the utility pole. Halfway up his face falls.

“Oh no.”                          

Saturn groans, prepared for the worst. “you dropped it again?

“Not this time, yet,” says Pluto. “It’s just—“

“Ah.” Saturn looks up from the radio she’s been tuning. “it’s Team Fucking Rocket, here to fail at stealing our cute little Pikachu before they blast themselves off again. Why not save ourselves the trouble and just hand him over?”

“They’re a Magneton. A ball of worthless junk.” says Luna-Terra.

“Mmmmm nah,” says Saturn. “I actually like Magneton. Magneton is three separate Magnemite who all had like, hopes and dreams before they got mashed together. Group South is a Dugtrio: one of them, god knows which, budded the other two off its flesh.”

“Dugtrio? I only care about the original 150. The new ones are all stupid,” says Luna-Terra. While Saturn is trying to figure out how to tell him how badly he just completely owned himself, Pluto pipes up.

“Pokemon,” says Pluto, “Is a Satanic Influence. And also Group South is here so please talk to them?”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

That’s Group South: inseparable, infuriating, and indistinguishable. Do they have discreet physical forms? yes probably but they’re always together and nobody cares which of them is actually which. Group East doesn't agree on much, but all of them will concede that Group South is just the fucking worst.

“Hey.” says Luna-Terra. “hey!” says Saturn. “h, ey,,,” says Pluto, trying unsuccessfully to hide behind the radio pole.

“You guys got the forest sirens. We got the lake sirens.”

“You guys got the forest sirens. Go check your own sirens.”

“You guys got the forest sirens. Go away.”

Luna-Terra shrugs. “Captain said these’re ours.”

Pluto nods.

“Why do you hang out with these losers, Saturn? Luna-Terra’s such a drag.”

“Why do you hang out with these losers, Saturn? Is Pluto sucking your dick too?”

“Why do you hang out with these losers, Saturn? They just mooch off your hard work.”

“Yep.” says Saturn. “right in three. I literally have to.” She blows and pops another bubble and turns away from Group South.

“You know,” she says, “If you two were nicer to me, we might get along better. Just something to think about.”

“Thank you, Saturn.” says Luna-Terra, in a voice that absolutely fails to convince even Pluto.

“Thank you, Saturn!” says Pluto, in a clear bright voice, like if he says it loudly enough nobody will remember how shitty Luna-Terra is being. It's pathetic. That, more than anything else, is what gets Saturn to save him: Group South is going to eat him alive and Saturn doesn't want to watch someone that pathetic stand there and take it. For personal reasons.

 

♄ + ♇

 

“Let’s go, Pluto,” says Saturn. She takes him firmly by the shoulder and steers him away, towards the next tower. Pluto doesn’t resist; if he did she’d probably leave him behind.

“Where are you going? Off to take advantage of innocent little Pluto?”

“Where are you going? Aren’t you worried Luna-Terra will get into trouble without you?”

“Where are you going? Stay.”

“Hey.” says Luna-Terra. Pluto and Saturn almost don’t recognize his voice. It’s low and commanding without being hurried, and more than a little sexy.

Something seeps out in that word. Usually Luna-Terra doesn’t give a fuck, but now Luna-Terra doesn’t give a fuck in an entirely different way. There’s a flash of something shimmering green and pink like elytra, _click click,_ and Luna-Terra is holding his butterfly knife.

Pluto and Saturn have seen it before, of course. Luna-Terra uses it for tricks and cheating on wilderness survival tests. It’s a toy, or a tool, kind of like him. Neither of them had processed it as a thing that could seriously hurt someone. It’s a little more than a little sexy, now! But Luna-Terra goes back to his normal voice:

“Go do your own sirens.” It’s like he’s not even holding a knife. What a waste.

“Whatever. We just came to tell you _._ ”

“Whatever. You need to chill, _bro._ ”

“Whatever. That won’t help you against the Devil.”

And then the two of us are out of earshot.

 

+++

 

The next siren is lower, down by the water. Tiny waves lick at the edges of the lake like fingers sliding on smooth metal. The late afternoon light is goldenrod-yellow, the color of unhealthy urine—it reaches through the woods to cast long dark shadows out on the land and water and the two of them.

Saturn touches the water: it’s cold, but she only feels the bite of bone-chill after she’s taken her finger out.

“Why did you do that?” asks Pluto. Not Why did you touch the freezing lake, Why did you save me? Implicit in Pluto’s question is the uncomfortable fact that Pluto usually doesn’t get saved.

Pluto isn’t judging Saturn, he promises himself. Pluto just really wants to know why. Pluto has not considered that the fact that he isn’t judging Saturn actually makes it a lot harder on her. Pluto doesn’t know a lot of things.

“Cause fuck those jerks, I guess.” says Saturn. She’s feeling weirdly honest. Maybe it’s the fact that no boys are around. Well, no boys except Pluto, and he doesn’t really count. In Saturn’s opinion, boys without power are hardly boys at all.

She fiddles with the radio a bit as Pluto stands by attentively.

“Why’d you do that thing at the bonfire? The sermon? Did you volunteer or do the counselors hate you as much as everyone else?”

Pluto looks even smaller than he usually does.

“I, I thought you might get it.”

Saturn has no idea what Pluto is talking about. It’s all over her face, but Pluto could tell even if it wasn’t. Just because he can’t tell exactly what makes people feel things doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel those feelings himself. He smiles a little at his own thought and cringes a bit at the smile, and then he realizes that Saturn’s been looking at the lake, not at him the whole time. Pluto feels kind of stupid.

That's normal.

“Nobody got it. I mean, everybody knew what you were talking about but nobody had any idea why anybody would even volunteer to give the bonfire sermon, let alone about something like that. It’d be ballsy if it wasn’t so spineless.”

“Do you know about _tollis peccata_ Offering?” asks Pluto, rather than address Saturn's implicit question. “Some radios need grounding, right?”

Saturn doesn’t enjoy the hard sciences—she prefers math and physics—and she’s not going to sit and listen to Pluto talk Soteriology or Theosophy no matter how bad she has to admit she feels about how lonely he is.

“Keep it short.”

Pluto seems to be choosing his next words very carefully. “Camp is full, of… unwholesome, desires, and I—”

“Oh.” says Saturn. “Is that why you thought I’d get it? Am I a slut, Pluto?

She pulls a lollipop out of a skirt pocket; bites off the wrapper and spits it into the lake and sticks it in her mouth.

“You sure looked like one up there,” she says, “talking about how you struggled with, mmm. ‘carnal self-abuse’ and ‘protecting your virtue from your own roaming hands’ and  ”God’s disapproving gaze on you as you stole pleasure from your body. You know, I’m pretty sure half the people in camp jacked off after that thinking of you.”

Pluto looks like he wants to die.  

To his credit, or maybe out of terror (maybe he’s choking on the foot he stuffed in his mouth) he stays silent. He sure isn’t the kind of boy that Saturn’s used to!

“I mean, you did pretty good!” Saturn says. “You got everyone’s eyes on you, and I’m sure a lot of boys are panicking about being gay. And then on top of that there’s this whole thing with sin and purity, you know, that you hit pretty much perfectly, but. Who are you even doing this for? like it’s fun to play around and drive people wild but the LORD God spoke asunder the Darkness and unveiled the Face of the deep; the Day He called Light and the Night he called Dark. Man He created in His image and Woman He created from Man. He is superior to him is superior to her is superior to Her. The infinite Wellspring begets continually the Crown of Man by emanation. The Crown of Man begets continually the Womb which Receives by emanation. The Womb which Receives begets continually the husk of horned Sathariel by emanation. The nature of God is the creating of Man the nature of God is the creation of Man the God of Nature is the Man of Creating the God of Nature is the Man of Creation and it is the withdrawing and contraction of the Lord which produces the husk which conceals okay, Pluto? Are you okay?” says Saturn, as Pluto stands by the darkness upon the face of the deep lake in the lengthening shadows and piss-sickly light with tears streaming down his face.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luna-Terra's Pokemon Team:  
> Charizard (This is a famous Starter Pokemon.)  
> Gyarados (This species requires patience or lots of Rare Candy to raise.)  
> Haunter (Would be a Gengar if Luna-Terra had anyone to trade with.)  
> Nidoqueen (This species is exclusively female. A male could be acquired but would take time to level up.  
> Hitmonchan (This species is exclusively male. This species cannot be wearing a skirt. Boys don't get to wear skirts.)  
> Omanyte (This pokemon is cute. Luna-Terra keeps it unevolved so that it can learn stronger moves faster. Luna-Terra doesn't care about the cuteness of his Pokemon. Luna-Terra is sad all the time and knows exactly why.)
> 
> gosh i wonder what saturn was talking about. i hope that's not important~


	3. 8PM - sweat-slick

 

The road to hell is supposed to be paved with good intentions, but Pluto isn't seeing any!

The road to the Devil, on the other hand, isn’t paved with anything but dappled evening sunlight (unless you count the omnipresent empty chip bags and candy wrappers that keep appearing all over camp no matter how many Pluto picks up). The Capital C Cabin is actually surprisingly close to the rest of camp, so the walk isn’t a problem, but the trail is still narrower because nobody, not even the counselors, ever comes this way if they can help it. The only incense here is in traces on clothing; impossible to ever scrub out but much more bearable than the thick foggy haze over camp proper.

The sirens are off. Somewhere a bird chirps, and is silent.

It would be nice to be out here in the forest if it weren’t for the Devil and the sweltering heat, the Devil’s hot breath; an uncomfortable reminder that the sirens and radios and holy water are behind them. They're walking right into Devil’s open jaws.

Saturn spins her radio in her hand. Luna-Terra grips his tighter. Pluto’s hangs heavy off his bag, just within his reach.

They’re all telling themselves the same thing: the Devil is weak, so weak even kids can kill him, even kids who are failures (like each of them knows themself to be). If the Devil was a real problem, Camp Staff would call in the Real Scouts, with their transformation sequences and crystodyne diodes, for an actual exorcism.

Humans are a lot more likely to kill you than the Devil is. Statistically.

They can do something about the heat, at least. Luna-Terra has accepted Saturn’s offer to pour water on his head without removing it from his ever-present gray hoodie, so now he looks soggy and sullen instead of just sullen. Saturn shoved both her hands into her hair in a way both spontaneous and practiced and then poured like half her water bottle on her head and then pushed it around with her fingers and somehow that made her hair like, the perfect amount of messy. Now the tips of her hair are keeping her white shirt very wet and very see-through, which is keeping Luna-Terra’s attention on the ground and trees and Pluto and literally everywhere else.

Pluto’s hair is wet too; it was wet when Luna-Terra met up with them. Saturn looked Luna-Terra right in the face while she poured water on her hand and then she grabbed Pluto’s ass. Pluto shrieked and laughed and now there’s a wet handprint there on his unrealistically plush posterior, another thing for Luna-Terra to want and suffer for wanting.

Luna-Terra wonders if his life is just like, a porn film with no porn, or maybe some terrible anime full of panty shots and girls who fall over in increasingly contrived ways so that they land with increasingly intimate body parts in increasingly embarrassing positions.

Girls aren't supposed to act like this. Not that he knows how girls are supposed to act, or has any interest in knowing how girls are supposed to act. But Saturn clearly does, and she’s clearly refusing to act like a girl, whatever that means, and for some reason that really pisses Luna-Terra off and makes him sad. Luna-Terra doesn’t like thinking about girls. Luna-Terra knows why he doesn’t like thinking about girls. Luna-Terra is miserable pretty much all of the time. These facts are inextricably linked: a chain of logic pulling him down through dark water. Don’t think about girls, or whatever air you’ve managed to gasp will be forcibly purged from your body.

Not that he has any interest in boys. Pluto has a nice ass. The niceness of that ass is just like, an objective fact. It bounces just a little as he moves; how unfair is that? Pluto has soft skin and even softer lips and a very feminine voice that Luna-Terra would think was nice if he ever used it to say anything but garbage.

Luna-Terra isn’t gay. It isn’t gay to want those things, even if it is wrong. It’s just wrong for different reasons. Anyways if the boy looks like a girl then that’s how he’s seeing “him”—the boy as a girl—and that isn’t gay at all; but Luna-Terra would rather die than admit any of this to anyone, even himself.

So here they are, arriving: Saturn, looking like a total babe, Pluto, the very picture of an innocent schoolgirl sans skirt plus pants, and Luna-Terra, sticky-soggy with incense and sweat and water that is probably full of Saturn’s backwash.

 

+++

 

“The lock is broken.” says Pluto. “But look at this cabin!”

It’s true; the lock is no longer buzzing. Saturn grips her radio tighter and pushes the door open, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary inside.

“We need to get this fixed.” she says.

Pluto just thinks it’s kind of amazing that the cabin is still standing. The original shoddy walls are barely visible under the layers of equally shoddy repair work, and the electrical wiring is actively sparking a little. It seems wrong to go in while it’s still light out, though. Luna-Terra is very tall, so Pluto stays outside to keep him company while he tests the curved blade of his radio on shrubs and fallen branches. Saturn slumps on a wall, then yells when she gets poked by a nail.

“Hey LT,” she says. “wanna go help me find some wire so I can fix the door?” She motions toward other cabins in even worse shape than the one they’ll spend the night in.

“No.” says Luna-Terra, but he goes anyways. 

 

♁ + ♄

 

Saturn hums as she picks her way through the undergrowth, skirt swaying very deliberately. She likes the way Luna-Terra looks at her, eyes full of longing, disgust, and confusion, and it’s taking her a lot of willpower not to look back at him behind her. She hikes her skirt up just a little higher.

Boys, Saturn thinks, are so easy. She found the wire in the last house. Luna-Terra is so frustrated and clueless and she wants to make him stop acting like he’s above everything and everyone. She wants to pull him down to earth and hold him there and step on him. She wants him to want her and she wants him to know it.

He’s on the edge of something, Saturn knows, and she wants oh so badly to push him off. Usually she'd restrain herself, but usually she'd have her best friend with her. Mercury's here at camp but the two of them haven't spoken since they both arrived—neither wants to talk about what happened—and honestly? it was Saturn’s fault, so if Mercury doesn’t want to talk to her then she can just, do! her! own! thing! and what she wants to do right now is Luna-Terra.

She enters the greenhouse; he follows her in—

Saturn has a second to adjust. She’s good at that: she’s had plenty of practice preparing for someone who maybe she’ll beg to take her back. Who is she kidding? She absolutely will! but anyway here’s what Luna-Terra sees: Saturn bent over, skirt up enough to reveal certain pertinent details and low enough to leave others mysterious, back arched downward, her hands on a desk covered in delicate blue flowers. She’ll leave handprints there, she thinks as she waits. She’ll wipe them off on that hoodie after she tears it off him.

She pops her bright pink bubblegum as obscenely as she can, which is very.

Luna-Terra sees Saturn there, skirt up, dripping wet with maybe water or maybe sweat or maybe something else and he just stops functioning.

He— he wants. He doesn’t. He wants to prove that he is. He wants to prove that he isn’t. He can’t, he mustn’t; he could— he shouldn’t. Each impulse is a knife and each knife is very sharp and getting sharper. The knives are sharpening themselves on each other in his chest.

 

He reaches out gingerly to bring Saturn close or guide her away; draws his hand back because he doesn’t want either of those things.

What he wants is to not deal with this. That’s the feeling that travels down his arm.

Luna-Terra prefers, when he thinks of himself at all, to consider himself some ethereal being of light bound into his flesh by a horrible curse. That way he doesn’t have to take responsibility for his body, which does things like the thing it is about to have done.

There’s a loud sound—his hand stings—Saturn makes a pornographic noise, the kind that Luna-Terra understood was fake but enjoyed anyways and now can never enjoy again—kind of a moan, kind of a squeal; dripping with want—and something goes wrong: his body burns with light electric and he tries desperately not to think about the almost-pain between his legs—but it’s too late: Luna-Terra has wrenched control back and has no idea what to do with it and so he just kind of collapses backward into a rotting kitchen cabinet.

Saturn peeps over her shoulder, wondering what that noise was and where the next smack is? maybe he’s making her wait for it? She should just walk out, she really should—but it felt so _good_ , and Saturn would do and has done plenty of worse things just to get punished.

…That’s why she’s here actually. She’s not going to start considering consequences now though, not with Luna-Terra half-sunk into the cabinet, sprinkled with blue lilies and rotten wood. Some of the debris has fallen into his hoodie, and he is busy extracting it and pretending Saturn isn’t there, which! he sure knows how to get her. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin but there’s only one thing that drives Saturn mad: somebody who won’t look at her.

Fine then.

That just means she needs to try harder. She’ll make him see just what he’s missing. She captures one of Luna-Terra’s legs between her own and leans forward, fitting herself to him, over him—places one hand on either side of his head; grinds herself shamelessly on him, feeling his hardness beneath her; _purrs_ in a voice like smoke and honey—

“Is that a knife in your pocket? Or the only part of you willing to admit how much you want me?”

“It’s not either of those things,” says Luna-Terra. He still won’t fucking make eye contact but his voice is a little unsteady, which for Luna-Terra is basically like he’s hyperventilating. Saturn savors her victory and pushes on.

“…get off.” says Luna-Terra.

“Look me in the eyes and say that one more time and I absolutely _will_ ,” says Saturn. The double entendre is automatic: she doesn’t mean it but she doesn’t regret it either. And maybe she will!

Luna-Terra finally, finally looks at her, and then his left leg kicks out hard sideways and the cabinet they’re embedded in comes crashing down, drenching them both in old wet wood and broken blue flowers.

They fall. He lands over her; the last of the debris sliding off his back, head turned away, and leaves without even brushing herself off. Saturn stays lying on her back for a little while, plucking wood bits out of her hair and thinking about payback. How fun will it be to crack someone whose desires are that repressed? Saturn is gonna get totally railed, and when she does she’ll forget all her problems and it’ll be totally fucking awesome.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so here, is ch 3. this one needed a lot of polishing. i hope you enjoy it.
> 
> heres some Pluto Facts!  
> Pluto defines the solar system, the border between Being and Not Being.  
> Pluto is the Roman name for the Greek God Hades. In the age of space, Humanity considered those planets to which the Native Sphere extended to be Roman rather than Greek.  
> Pluto likes to bake.


	4. 9PM - Transubstantiation

 

The sun slipped away when nobody was looking at it. All three of them can hear the sirens buzzing like hornets on the other side of a wall; muted, ominous. This tiny rickety shittily-constructed cabin is the only thing left in the world, a sputtering flame in the vast sea of the Devil.

They're imagining the Devil, they know. Nothing is pressing up against the walls. But that doesn't make the Devil any less real. At least the house radio seems  to be holding.

They’re supposed to sleep in shifts. Pluto worked out a schedule. But if they’re honest: none of them is any good at getting up and also there’s, you know, the Devil, and even if there wasn't it would still be too damn hot.

Pluto is hugging a pillow and sitting on a corner of his sleeping bag: Luna-Terra is sprawled out on his back over a considerable portion of the rest and also on the floor. Saturn is sitting on Pluto’s other pillow (he brought two and his bedding and also his bible. nobody else bothered bringing anything that didn’t fit in their pockets) popping her bubble gum and thinking about how in the name of god is she going to spend an entire night with Mister Coward and Mister Doormat. Misters Sour and Sweet. Misters Probably and Definitely Homosexual. without losing her mind from sheer boredom.

She’s still twiddling her mental thumbs (Mister Meaty, or maybe Bony? and Mister Fruity) when Pluto, with his pure, open face, leans forward in a way that Saturn can’t help but think would frame the cleavage Pluto doesn’t have real well. If Pluto were a girl she’d be a total fucking knockout. Chew chew chew wshhhhhhhh Pop! goes the bubble gum.

Saturn doesn’t think she’s like, really into girls—she’s messed around, sure, but only with a few, and there were circumstances that made it pretty definitively non-gay—but she thinks it might be a little bit gay for her to understand the appeal of that innocent cruelty. She wants to dress him up and teach him things with tongues!

Pluto taps her on the shoulder, very politely. She realizes he’s been waiting to ask her something, and that she’s been sitting there staring like an idiot. Saturn hates people thinking she's stupid or admitting she's been wrong but who's Pluto going to tell? Who even cares? And maybe he'll have something interesting to say this time too.

“Do you want to play Truth or Dare?”

helllllllll yes she does.

 

♁ + ♇

 

Pluto figured going to Saturn first would put a little more weight in his request but Luna-Terra seems just as bored as they are.

“Only if I go first,” he says. Saturn agrees; Pluto can tell she wants to be dared. Luna-Terra quietly ducked into the cabin before sundown with a wet spot on one pant leg. Saturn came in a little later, after she’d fixed the house radio, and ever since she’s been trying to catch Luna-Terra glancing at her.

Pluto figures maybe he can get them to ask each other things and maybe be a little more honest. He just wants to know what happened!

Saturn loads her words like cartridges. “So, Luna-Terra.” she says. “What's it going to be? Handjob? Blowjob? I'm on my period but anal's on the table if you shut up and play your cards right. Are you going to dare Pluto out of the room or get right to business?  ”

Pluto can hear the song of Saturn’s heart, rising out of the radio static: Love me! Let me love you! Hurt me! Let me hurt you! Look at me why won’t you look at me nothing is wrong with me Nothing is wrong with me is something wrong with me want me want me want me boiling like acid inside her. Pluto feels a tiny drip of that acid in him just listening to Saturn. It snaps like pop rocks in his heart, tickling and sparking.

“… Take off your skirt.” says Luna-Terra, voice flat as ever.

“Done.”

Saturn wiggles up and out, keeping one foot in the loop, and kicks it roughly in Luna-Terra’s direction. “But that wasn’t the dare, was it~?”

“No.” says Luna-Terra. “I dare Pluto to put that skirt on.”

Pluto knows that’s not how the game is supposed to be played, but he can hear Luna-Terra’s heart, on a very different wavelength than Saturn's: harsh noise edged by a fingernail of spite, like a waning crescent moon. Luna-Terra really is a coward, running away from Saturn like that! And Saturn is despicable for letting him. “Chase me!” “No, I’ll chase someone else.” “Fine then, but don’t expect me to want you.” “Fine then. I don’t want to be wanted.” It’s so pathetic!

And now Pluto is the one who has to carry forward the dizzying song-flow of human interaction. He’s not  quite sure he’s ready! But he kind of has to be. At least he’s trying this with two people who are sinners anyways.

“Okay.” says Pluto. “Luna-Terra, can you move please? I’m going to get changed in the bathroom.”

“Just put it on then drop your pants.” says Luna-Terra, but he rolls over anyways.

Pluto knows all about sin.

Sin is anathema to the will of the LORD God, which Pluto is very familiar with. Holy Holy Holy is the LORD God Almighty who Was and Is and Is Forevermore. Holy Holy Holy is the name of the LORD Most High, whose Perfect Will IS Righteous Law. Holy Holy Holy is the LORD God Eternal, wellspring of life and savior of the world. The Love of God is all-consuming. God is Love. God is Truth. God is Faith. God is Life. God is Purity. Perfect is the Judgement of the LORD Most High, who shall cast the unworthy into the Lake of Fire to be burned for ever and ever. None may look upon Him and live. Who can fathom His glory? The Presence of the Lord is that which sustaineth. The stain of sin is the stain of separation from the Will of the Lord. Nothing can survive removed from the wellspring of the LORD. The Will of the LORD God is all-consuming fire. The Will of the LORD is the end of Sin. Repent, sinner, or be cast into the Lake of Fire. The Fear of God is righteous. Therefore, brothers and sisters, present your bodies as living sacrifices, consecrated unto God, by your worship. Be transformed by the remaking of your mind, that you may discern the Will of God which is that which is that which is Good and Perfect and Acceptable.

The Will of God will burn away your old tongues and you will speak in tongues of the flame of the Lord. For who can stand against Him?

It’s so easy to separate oneself from God. It’s also the hardest thing in the world. Pluto wonders if this is how Jesus felt. Jesus lived a blameless life, but the very fact of incarnation separated Him from God. To be human is to be separated from God is to sin. God created humanity. God created sin by virtue of the existence of places he is not. God and humanity create sin by movement and being.

Long ago, a girl bit an apple and then God cursed all her children and killed her.

Pluto puts on the skirt.

All the actions of God are righteous. Can God create a burden so heavy he cannot lift it? There is one answer to this question and Pluto has studied it for years. It’s so, so easy; easy like breathing, or dying.

Pluto sins. Her pants drop to her ankles and she steps out of them like Venus born from the ocean.

The air is forcibly purged from Luna-Terra’s body.

Saturn’s gaze tingles deliciously as it runs up her legs and down her neck. Luna-Terra’s gaze is locked on her face.

Eventually Saturn pops her gum appreciatively and the spell is broken. “I’ve got lipstick,” she says, like she knows Pluto will accept. Which she will! The lipstick she’s got is “FUCK ME Red”; Saturn applies it expertly. “It’s weird,” she says in a way that means she doesn’t mind in the slightest, “doing this for someone else.”

Pluto twists her hips, experimenting with the way the skirt flares.

“Thank you, Luna-Terra,” she says. “I don’t think I ever could have done this without you. But I’m going to dare you now. Be ready.”

Luna-Terra doesn’t want to be dared. Luna-Terra wants to rip off his skin. Every soft word from Pluto’s hypersaturated red lips is a flaying-knife, tracing thin red lines like vines on his body through which blood wells up. Luna-Terra’s life is an exquisitely designed iron maiden of pain and temptation from which there is one escape, but if he strains upward into the blades and keeps his face out of the blood he can force down a few mouthfuls of sticky stale air.

“Yeah. Okay.” Luna-Terra’s instinct is to survive, so there’s really no escape at all. “This game is rigged though. Don’t you hate rigged games?”

“Nah.” says Saturn. “We rigged it.” We: Pluto and Me. Even if there was no plotting or explicit collusion, the deck is just always stacked against Luna-Terra. No matter who he picked, the game was already over.

“No.” says Pluto. “They don’t exist. Rigging is just another secret part of the game, and it adds to the experience! Now, Truth or Dare?”

“Dare.” says Luna-Terra. _click-click_ goes the beetle-wing butterfly knife; that’s the only way Pluto can tell how nervous he is. Luna-Terra is very slippery in any kind of direct confrontation, and she still isn’t positive that he won’t worm out of it somehow.

“Can I see that knife?” asks Pluto. “Oh, this isn’t the dare. It’s just very pretty and I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“… This was the cheapest one.” Actually Luna-Terra paid 20 bucks extra for the iridescent finish, but there’s no way he would ever admit that. Still, he hands it over. Pluto holds it like it’s a real butterfly she’s afraid to crush.

“Hmmm.” says Pluto. “Okay! I’ve got it. Luna-Terra, I dare you to say something nice about everybody in this room. And it has to be really nice!”

“What if I can’t come up with anything?” asks Luna-Terra.

“Then lie, and make it convincing.”

“What if it’s not?”

Pluto smiles. “If you can lie well enough to fool me, then go ahead! If you can’t, then you’re just hopeless.”

How hard can it be to give genuine compliments? “Saturn,” says Luna-Terra, “you’re very honest.”

“That’s wrong!” says Pluto, “and also not a compliment. Try saying something about how she makes you feel!”

Saturn makes Luna-Terra feel angry and lonely and jealous. The manacle slams shut around his ankle and drags him down, down deep through razor reefs and the black glass seafloor to places that don’t understand what air is. This far down, the pressure is like being under the eye of god, and it squeezes a half-truth out of Luna-Terra before he can stop himself.

This is what falls out of Luna-Terra's mouth and squelches limply on the floor, trailing implications:

“Saturn,” he says, “you make me feel wanted.” It doesn’t come out as the slight he pretends he intended it. Pluto and Saturn can hear the rest, as clearly as if he'd said it himself: I don’t want to be wanted. I’m afraid of being wanted. I want to be wanted, which is probably the biggest admission Luna-Terra has made in years, even if it's only implicit.

“Good job!” says Pluto. “What about me?”

“Easy.” says Saturn, and smirks lasciviously.

“You’re cute, and I’m not gay.” says Luna-Terra, “and thanks, Devil, for not eating me yet.” He’s done. That’s the end of the game. Maybe they can do something more fun now like get horribly drunk or die.

“Uh-uh-uh~!” says Pluto. “You forgot yourself.”

Luna-Terra really didn’t, and he says as much.

“Are you sure.” says Pluto, not unkindly

“…Yes.” says Luna-Terra.  “I’m not a pushover.”

“That was very hard for you to say, and I’m very proud of you for saying it.”

Saturn can’t fucking believe this!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heres saturns lipsticks:  
> red 5  
> red 666  
> FUCK ME red  
> a pink one but its the same color as her gum? so its just weird to ever wear even though she chose it specifically to invoke the idea of bubblegum  
> cherry red  
> popped cherry red  
> croquet. perhaps at some point in the future she'll smear that one all over her face!  
> seriously whoever names these things is real horny! its kind of gross tbh.
> 
> oh and um  
> here's some girls Saturn has kissed:  
> a few girls but she didn't know their names  
> some blonde girl who kept watching Luna-Terra who looks like her name is probably Tiffany  
> her best friend.  
> :c
> 
> ok finally this ones done! next up: in any order: Boundary of Possibility, In the Name of the Moon, and io! Saturnalia


	5. 10PM - three choose two

 

There’s a something outside. It’s not a sound exactly; more the shadow of a silence against the unrelenting low grind of the crickets and sirens. Something is out there in the godforsaken woods, twitching and coiling like a tail or a tongue. If it has legs, they ripple like tapping fingers. If it has eyes, they’re fixed right on us.

The Devil is waiting.

“We should go out,” says Luna-Terra.

 “Uh, sorry?” says Saturn, without even trying to sound contrite. “I’m not looking for a relationship. I just want to suck your dick!”

Luna-Terra rolls his eyes. Saturn does a thing with her mouth and one hand like she’s sucking an invisible dick except her lips are pursed very close together.

“You said,” says Pluto, arms crossed, “you weren’t a pushover. Is rejecting Saturn like that something that takes a spine or not?”

“…She wasn’t serious,” says Luna-Terra.

“Yeah,” says Saturn. “i wasn’t serious. luna-terra’s fucking hung, actually.”

“Would you do something like that right in front of me?” says Pluto, like she doesn’t already know. “We really should go check though.”

“Fine.” says Saturn. “Pluto, toss me your pants.”

“Never mind.” says Luna-Terra. It’s obvious to everyone involved that he just wants to escape Saturn.

It’s like that old puzzle: you have a slut, a doormat, and a coward; get as many as you can across the river before the Devil fucks you up.

So: who stays and who goes?

 

AND SO

♁ + ♇

(io Saturnalia)

 

 

“Thank you so much for the skirt, but you never answered my question.” says Pluto. “Does being a pushover mean pushing Saturn over?” Luna-Terra’s listening, even though he can barely hear the sirens over the crickets. Nature doesn’t give a damn about the Devil, or about humanity.

These woods, though, are human. The trail is wide and sporadically lit. They slow down walking in the islands of light and hurry just barely faster in the darkness between them. In darkness like this, slavering, sharp-toothed and grinning, "they" becomes "we".

The devil is licking its lips.

Warm light drips down the blade of Luna-Terra’s radio like honey. It rests comfortably in his hand, like he’s been holding it all his life. Pluto’s radio is dull and rough. She holds the loop of it tightly, one hand clamped over the other, like she's worried that if she drops it it'll fall into the abyss. Pluto is apart from god, for a little while, and completely alone.

“Heh.” says Luna-Terra. “That depends on how you look at it.” Which he knows is a non-answer and an invitation. Pluto can push harder if she wants. If it comes down to pushing and pulling, Luna-Terra can’t lose. It’s impossible to push or pull somebody who can’t be touched.

So Pluto doesn’t.

She lets herself fall a little behind Luna-Terra, so she can’t see his face. Luna-Terra lets her fall a little behind him, so he can’t see her skirt.

Luna-Terra's steps are the steps of a toy soldier that needs winding: one foot ahead of the next, again and again, like he hit rock bottom years ago and no longer remembers how to walk any other way.

“Do you think Saturn would want you,” Pluto says, “if you took that hoodie off?”

“I don’t care what she thinks.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“Saturn doesn’t want me.”

Pluto clicks her tongue. “Well, I think she does, but that’s not what I asked you, Luna-Terra. You’re really terrible at putting yourself in other people’s shoes, aren’t you? It’s cute!”

Luna-Terra pulls his hood back in answer. His blonde hair is long, messy and uncared for. He stares out at Pluto, defiant and pitiful in the thick yellow light. I’m in my shoes, his eyes say. I can’t carry any more. Why should I dream of being someone else? Why should I give my misery an inch of slack to hang me with?

“You really are miserable.” says Pluto. “Do you think Saturn doesn’t know that?”

They’ve stopped. Luna-Terra stands in the middle of a spotlight, a mockery of the sun. The darkness outside the circle is a darkness that no sun could ever exist in.

“She thinks it’s cute too.”

The spotlight flickers. For a sliver of a second, the darkness washes over them. Pluto shivers in the unbearable heat.

“So that’s the solution,” says Luna-Terra. “Stop letting my problems poke through and Saturn will leave me alone. If it’s that easy don’t you think I would have done it by now? It’s fucking sick,” he spits, ”that she gets off on that. Don’t you get it? She looks at me, and she sees,” his voice breaks, ”something she can use to hurt herself. Like she wants to remind me that I deserve to be hurt.”

Pluto stands silently near the edge of the circle.

“Forget it.” says Luna-Terra. “You can’t understand me. You’re wearing her fucking skirt.”

Pluto frowns. “You really do have it the worst, don’t you. Look at me, here in Saturn’s skirt. I got so lucky, thanks to you, and I could never say I wish I hadn’t. Everything I do hurts you. You’re so noble and delicate and so, so strong to fight like that. I could never understand your pain, and Saturn can’t either. I’m so sorry you have to carry that. Nobody should have to carry that.”

Luna-Terra can’t be pushed or pulled or cut or hit. The only way to reach him is to cheat: to put yourself on the line with no guarantee he’ll respond. Stretch out your hand and unscarred arm and close your eyes and trust.

Pluto’s not stupid, or not that stupid! She knows she could get cut, but she comes close anyways. She hugs Luna-Terra, pins his arms to his sides so he doesn’t have to worry about hugging back. She can feel his heart beating butterfly-fast and the hardness of his stick-thin limbs under the pullover, feel his chin on the side of her head, feel the pain he can’t let go of. He’s trembling very lightly. There are a couple of tears in his hoodie, but Pluto’s fingers would never enter like that. Pluto doesn’t want to tease him apart, at least not now. She's holding him together.

(Pluto’s skin is cool and clammy; slightly sticky in the hot summer night. Pluto is very soft. Luna-Terra has never been more aware of his own hardness and sharpness.)

Of course he has it worse than her. She’s so sorry.

Boys don’t get to cry. He wipes his face on her shoulder and pulls his hood back up.

 

 

OR

 ♄ + ♇ 

(in the name of the moon)

 

“god Whats his problem.” says Saturn. “like what even is his deal.” Pluto can read her bitterness all over her face. Saturn is lonely and usually she’s the type to look for a rebound, but she already did; that was Luna-Terra and it’s not going well.

“’Why doesn’t he want me’, you mean?” says Pluto. “What if he just isn’t attracted to you?”

“But he is,” says Saturn. “He’s so obviously horny. You saw how he looks at me, how he refuses to look at me! He looks at you too!”

Usually Pluto doesn’t like saying things about people, because they’re all so obvious and also it makes them mad. Saturn’s right though; Luna-Terra’s heart is heavy with want.

“What am I supposed to do about that?” she says, tone a hair brighter.

The crickets are screaming obnoxiously. Their cries meld with the harsh noise of the sirens into a clotting static, sharp and nasty, like a hairball made of razor wire that fades into the back of your awareness until you put your hand on it and scream in unbearable pain.

If you pretend some things don’t exist, they can’t affect you. That’s a lie, but Pluto and Saturn don’t know what else they could ever do here in the forest with the Devil lurking just where they can’t see, always a step ahead and behind. And against that Devil, "they" becomes "we".

“I wanted to talk to you.” blurts Saturn. “Girl talk.”

Pluto cocks her head and smiles. Her lips are very red. They say Go on, I’m listening and Of course, for you, and other subtler things that Saturn doesn’t understand and would like very much to know. Suddenly Saturn finds the tines of her radio very interesting.

“What are you supposed to do about that.” Saturn says. “Well, do you want him? Figure that out and take him, then.”

Pluto considers for long enough that Saturn isn’t sure she has an answer. “I want Luna-Terra to be happy.”

It’s so genuine and pure that it actually kind of hurts Saturn a little. What’s wrong with the collisions of celestial bodies? she wants to object. Selfishness is honest. Skin on skin is honest. You take your pleasure from him (maybe her) and he takes it from you and afterwards everybody involved thinks they’ve won. You all wear smiles like you’ve stolen something precious from someone else and they never even realized.

The idiots!

That’s how it almost always goes.

“That’s not going to happen,” says Saturn. “He’s too fucking miserable.”

Saturn isn’t completely selfish, no matter how much she pretends. She’s not stupid either; she’s seen Luna-Terra’s knife and the way he refuses to ever roll his sleeves up. She wants to cut that pullover right off him and devour what’s underneath and if he gets something out of it too, then she wouldn’t be unhappy. Sex is a way to shut her mind and body up and Luna-Terra looks like he’s constantly being screamed at.

How else would someone like that get laid anyways! To be fair, Saturn’s seen plenty of girls looking at him. She made out with one of them herself, both of them hoping Luna-Terra would see them; used her as a weapon, like Saturn herself and Luna-Terra both tried to use Pluto.

None of those girls, though, would or could ever say anything. Luna-Terra is unapproachable. The only way through is to cheat, to reach into the storm of knives with no assurance you won’t have your arm flayed and grab him by the scruff of his stupid hoodie and drag him out yourself. But Saturn prefers to be the one being chased, rigging the game, so there’s not really any way through for her at all!

“That’s really very sweet of you to care about him like that,” says Pluto.

Saturn can’t accept that kindness. “He is though. What do you think will happen if we just leave him alone?”

Nobody but the devil says anything. He whispers about pleasure and pain between the black and white of the static buzz, and rakes his claws gently down their backs. Pluto holds her radio like it’s the only thing holding her upright. And then:

“Is that what you want?”

“Is it wrong to want?”

Saturn spits her gum into the darkness. Pluto watches it go: a blob of hot glistening pink against the void.

But who said what, exactly?

                   

OR

 ♁ + ♄

Object Class: Keter

 

“What the fuck.” says Luna-Terra. “She just put on your skirt and became a girl. What the fuck. It’s not supposed to work like that.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be mad she forced you out here with me?” says Saturn.

“I can defend myself.” says Luna-Terra.

“You mean you can run away.” says Saturn.

“… I can outrun you.” says Luna-Terra.

There’s an anecdote about outrunning a bear that Saturn thinks might fit, but she’s too conscious of the predator floating over her, coloring her words as they leave her mouth to make light of it. The Devil is heavy on their backs, like a hand on their shoulders or a truth that nobody wants to face up to.

Under that weight, against that Devil, "they" becomes "we".

“So,” says Saturn. “Could you live with yourself if the devil got me?”

Luna-Terra walks a little more briskly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes, then. Thanks. So could I! How else could I take that.” says Saturn.

“You want me to order you around.” says Luna-Terra. “Drop it.”

“Yes, Daddy,” says Saturn.

Luna-Terra reaches for something—not his knife, Pluto has that anyways—his radio then, tucked into the front pocket of his pullover. His hands clench. The radio screeches, caught on something as he draws it. His nails stamp four pink fingernail crescents on his right palm.

Luna-Terra usually runs away, but he’s fully capable of fighting. Every muscle in his body is tensed and sharp, singing like a drawn blade.

“Hey.” says Luna-Terra, voice flat and dull. “Never fucking say that again.”

“You really don’t get it,” Saturn retorts. “I don’t like listening when I’m ordered around, duh! Why’d you think I asked for it?”

“I have literally no idea.” says Luna-Terra. “Do you _like_ being a hypocritical bitch?”

Saturn pops her bubblegum. “hellll yes. Take the stick out of your ass and try it sometime. Actually, don’t.”

Luna-Terra evades, like he always does. “So then I just have to tell you to do something that is a good idea.”

“Ugh!” says Saturn. “My one weakness! Sensible advice. Except I don’t follow that anyways so you lose!

“The last sensible thing you did,” says Luna-Terra, “was give Pluto your skirt.”

“Didn’t work.” says Saturn. “That was a dig at you for wanting Pluto over me, because you think I’m gross and disgusting and can’t stand the thought of me having fun. I was going to watch you choose some boy in a skirt over me to make you see how gay you were, and then you were going to try and be straight and fuck me to prove it. Perfect plan. Pluto just turned into a girl though yeah what the fuck is even with that?”

“You know what we should do? Really do?” says Luna-Terra. “Pluto. We should—“

“We should do Pluto? Isn’t that gay?”

Luna-Terra unflinchingly grasps the metaphorical knife by the blade, leaves it slippery with blood. “Maybe for you.”

“Fuck!” says Saturn. “I can never suck a dick again! Except Pluto’s I guess. How gay is that, huh.”

Luna-Terra rolls his eyes. “We should leave Pluto out of this. She doesn’t belong here.”

Saturn shuts up.

There are two kinds of kids in the Summer Scouts: bad kids who thought they were good and bad kids who know just how bad they really are. Pluto isn’t a bad kid, or she’s good enough at hiding it that there’s no way she ever could have been caught. Pluto is a Good Kid and also, despite all odds, a genuinely good kid. 

Good kids don’t end up here. It’s far more likely that the adults fucked up somehow.

Pluto doesn’t deserve what’s coming.

They look at each other, really look.

Luna-Terra’s pullover hangs loose on his frame. His posture is terrible; he’s standing pitiful and defiant like if you come at him he’ll cut his own guts out and throw them in your eyes, or try but probably just fall over. Saturn is wearing pants that aren’t hers and a shirt that’s basically off at this point. Her posture is good, like she’s been trained for it.

There’s this small mercy: they both know at the end of the night, it won’t be Pluto the Devil comes for.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUS NOTE: this is a real tiny chapter! its not really even a chapter at all really, so i won't bother notifying anyone.
> 
> i did zero writing over thanksgiving, but now i can get back to releasing more chapters faster!  
> the next three chapters are all different "timelines". each results in the exclusion of a particular camper.
> 
> \---  
> NOW THIS ONE IS PREVIOUS TOO  
> ok so the first of three subchapterlettes is up! please wait warmly for the next two.
> 
> \---  
> FINAL NOTES:  
> Saturnalia was a Roman festival, notable for its reversal of social roles and norms. "In the name of the moon" is the catchphrase of a certain character. for instance, Luna-Terra might say: In the name of the moon, I'll punish myself endlessly and painfully for the fact of my existence. Keter-Class Objects are very difficult to contain via any containment procedures. 
> 
> so there you go! next up: what is that pink liquid and should we drink it (no) and will we drink it (yes)


	6. 11PM - hypersaccharine

“ughhhhhhhh” says Saturn. “I’m so booored. This is bullshit. Three teens in a cabin with zero adult supervision who can’t even play truth or dare right. We just like put Pluto in a skirt. No offense, Pluto, but I really think we could at least do some underage drinking.”

“I think it was a pretty good idea!” says Pluto, rummaging through the wall of drawers.

Luna-Terra looks like he wants to get absolutely fucking wasted, even more than he usually does, which is very. “Please don’t be fucking with me.”

“Please!” says Saturn. “Last time I tried to fuck with you you dropped that cabinet on my head.”

“Alcohol. Now.” says Luna-Terra.

Saturn pulls out a dusty green glass bottle from behind Pluto’s pillow and Luna-Terra is on his hands and knees, already halfway to her. She stops him with a single finger on his head, holding the bottle away with her other hand. “Ah ah ah! Not yet! You don’t even know what it is!”

“So?” says Luna-Terra. Luna-Terra’s never been one for eye contact, and now his eyes are firmly on the bottle. He moves forward, pushing off against the floor. Saturn has to use her whole hand, and then her arm, and then:

“Luna-Terra. Tonight, sin is fine, but you’re being _pathetic._ ” Pluto’s cheeks puff up as she strides right for him. Luna-Terra’s automated defense system kicks in and he kicks out, tries to ward her off with his elbow. He realizes, too late, that she’s not reaching for his arm.

Pluto _wrenches_ his hood back and Luna-Terra’s hair spills out, long and tangled.

“Dude,” says Saturn. “You need to take better care of your hair.”

Luna-Terra gives her some kind of a look: there’s no venom in it. The venom is already in Saturn.

Pop! goes her bubblegum.

Luna-Terra bolts for the bathroom. Pluto and Saturn can hear the sound of rushing water.

“Geez.” says Saturn. “You didn’t have to step in like that. Just let us work it out.” Pluto knows what she means: she’s thankful but worried that poor little Pluto might have barged into something she didn’t understand.

That’s fine. She can be poor little Pluto a while longer.  Tonight is a night for sin. Sin is the stain of separation from god. All the actions of God are righteous. God creates sin by withholding his divine light, and this too is righteous, for no man or woman may look upon the face of god and live.

“Can I have some?”

♁ + ♇

 

The bottle wasn’t ever full anyways, but it’s mostly gone by the time Luna-Terra comes out of the bathroom, mane slicked down and still dripping.

Pluto and Saturn are sitting on Pluto’s sleeping bag, backs to the wall. Pluto’s lips are stained the exact pink of Saturn’s bubblegum and that alone is almost enough to make Luna-Terra turn around, but she pats the space right next to her. Sit. Drink. Fuck it.

“we saved the rest for you!” says Saturn. “but if you want it you gotta—“

“Yes.” says Luna-Terra. “You fucking got me. Congrats.”

Luna-Terra knows pretty much nothing about alcohol except that it makes him drunk. This is different from the swill he’s used to: it’s thicker and slipperier and almost unbearably hypersaccharine, with an indescribable kick. It leaves his mouth tingling and his palms sweaty. Luna-Terra actually kind of likes the taste of alcohol. Not that he likes it exactly, more like it’s appropriate. Honest liquor should burn.

“We,” crows Saturn, “are going to play strip poker. Pluto has cards!”

Maybe it’s the liquid he can still feel seething in his stomach (isn’t that weird?) but Luna-Terra doesn’t mind. Strip poker isn’t played to win, which suits him just fine: Luna-Terra only ever plays to not lose. He’s pretty much untouchable; the sole benefit of having a face nearly decoupled from his whatever it is that produces emotions, which unfortunately prevents him from being happy about how neatly the situation fits his strengths. But that’s just how it goes!

He wipes his lips on the back of his hand. The stain is pink; he licks it off. “What is that stuff.”

“Poison.” says Saturn. “I don’t actually know whats in it. Pluto! Cards.”

“Yes ma’am!” says Pluto, rummaging through her bag. “I only have UNO cards though. I did set up precautions for tonight! I have an extra radio and some holy water, in case of emergency, and the playing of real cards is an amusement of which I could not approve*. Sorry! Oh well.”

“You have a sharpie in there?”

“Mhmm~!”

“Gimme. I wanna make some, changes. After I go pee. I’m going pee now!”

Pluto dutifully tosses them both over to her sleeping bag. Saturn marches into the bathroom like she’s on a mission. Luna-Terra suffers an attack of introspection.

*There are amusements, such as dancing, card playing, chess, checkers, etc., which we cannot approve, because Heaven condemns them. These amusements open the door for great evil. They are not beneficial in their tendency, but have an exciting influence, producing in some minds a passion for those plays which lead to gambling and dissipation. All such plays should be condemned by Christians, and the glorifying of the Lord Most High should be substituted in their place. Therefore, let us praise the name of the Lord God Almighty.

“… It’s good though.” he says.

Pluto tries to run a hand through his hair, but it catches enough times that she gives up. “It really is. Head down?”

When Luna-Terra complies, she wraps her towel tightly around his head, tucking every ratty strand in. Luna-Terra hasn’t been touched this gently since he was very small.

“Lie down?”

Luna-Terra isn’t drunk exactly but he doesn’t care about the difference. He’s tired, so tired, and he just wants to rest. So fine, he agrees. What’s wrong with that? He looks at the ceiling, so low overhead.

Pluto lies down too, with the back of her head on his belly. He doesn’t want to breathe. He really doesn’t want her to turn her head. It’s not a hug, but a hug isn’t what he’s looking for. Something in him just needs that constant steady soft touch.

He could fall asleep like this. He could never sleep like this. Whatever.

Pluto speaks up, her eyes on the ceiling just like his.

“You should loosen up. You’re too poky, you know.”

“Yeah.” he says. “I know.”

Pluto swallows. He can feel the tiniest movements of her head, feel the tension in her neck.

“Nothing we do here has any consequence.”

“So why do anything? Cause we got fucking, sent here. Can’t fight, can’t run, oh well. Suck it the fuck up and suffer and its over when its over.”

“This is, like, the only place that exists. Metaphorically. ‘A sputtering flame in the vast sea of the Devil pressing up against the walls’ you know?”

He does. He stays quiet.

“The devil is coming. Nothing you or me or Saturn can do about it will make any difference. It’s the will of god. For god so despised the world that he sent his only begotten son, so that whoever did not believe in him would perish, and suffer for all eternity. Nothing here in this cabin where I can do anything means anything.”

“That’s the only time it matters, right?” says Luna-Terra.

Pluto turns her head up towards him. There’s a little drop of pink on her lower lip still, and he wants so, so badly to lick it off. There’s a stab of pain in his heart, like he’s being punished even here and now. Like hell it doesn’t matter if he’s still feeling that.

“Didn’t you learn this in school, Pluto? If there’s a reward it doesn’t work. You have to do what god wants for the sake of sucking his dick or whatever.”

“Right.” says Pluto. “But what if I know there’s going to be a reward? Then the only answer that glorifies god is turning it down.”

“Then there was never any reward to begin with.” says Luna-Terra. “Then the game is fucking rigged and play if you have to but fuck it and fuck the assholes who set it up.”

“Rigged games don’t exist!” says Pluto. “And anyways I don’t want to fuck anybody up, not really. Do I look like I have any interest in assholes? Don’t answer that!”

She smiles. “I already got my reward, is the problem. And I’m not sorry at all! In fact, if I didn’t enjoy myself, that would hurt you even more.”

Pluto breathes in deep, closes her eyes as the air rushes out.

For everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under Heaven;

time for birth and death, time for sowing and reaping;

 time for killing and healing and breaking and building;

    for weeping, for laughing; for mourning, for dance;

    to cast away and to gather together. times for love and hate;

for profit and the loss, for youth and age.

What gains the worker for her toil?

 

“Are you asking me?” says Luna-Terra. “I don’t know. Surcease of pain.”

“Wrong!” says Pluto. “No such thing!”

“You fucking liar.” says Luna-Terra, and he smiles back.

(Saturn waits in the bathroom until their voices stop, steps softly out and takes a few minutes and a piece of paper from a notebook Pluto brought to do some game design. She envies their ability to sleep at a time like this, and the peace on their faces.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa this one got long? somehow?????


	7. 12AM - benthic zone

 

Luna-Terra floats gently up out of his clear formless dreams, back into his body (back into his pullover); opens his eyes to find Pluto and Saturn standing over him. There’s a weight on his chest: Pluto returned his knife, folded into itself.

“Good morning!” says Pluto. For a moment he can almost believe this hell is over, that the Devil just somehow inexplicably fucked off and left them alone, but it’s still dark outside and the sirens are seething.

“Real gentlemanly of you,” says Saturn, “leaving Pluto on the floor like that.”

There really isn’t any escaping this, is there!

“Fuck off.” says Luna-Terra. “Real ladylike of you to give us whatever the fuck that was. Did you have fun peeping from the bathroom.” He stretches and moves to a sitting position, being sure to stick his arm right out into Saturn’s personal space. The knife falls, half-opens.

“No!” says Saturn. “There’s no fucking porn here at camp! I was hoping for a show!”

“You must really be desperate then.” says Pluto. She shrugs, taking her time picking her words. “I just figured you’d want, mmm, something less nice? More degrading.”

Luna-Terra’s face looks like somebody with the kind of artistic genius that comes around maybe once a century who specialized in photo editing squished and dabbed and smoothed it into a U MAD reaction image: unbearably fucking smug.

Unfortunately for him, Saturn doesn’t actually know how to back down! Saturn likes being shamed; she’s shameless!

“Bitch!” she says, sticking her neck right out back at him, “you don’t get to fucking talk after you spanked me.”

“Oh my god!” says Pluto, while Luna-Terra stammers about just trying to push her away and Saturn has the same face he had on 10 seconds ago. “Is that what you two were doing earlier? Sin feels so good, doesn’t it?” Her hands play on the hem of her skirt.

“Like we were made for it.” says Saturn. “Which we kind of are. Now, Ehl Tee, get up and help us make rules for strip Uno?”

Luna-Terra rolls words in his mouth, testing them. “…What if I don’t want to?”

“Why not enjoy yourself?” says Pluto. “You don’t usually seem very concerned with morality at all!”

“I just don’t want to. Can I not want something?”

“Want is lack is sin, sundered from the fullness of god.” says Pluto. “So maybe? But tonight isn’t a good night for it.”

“Gosh.” says Saturn. “We get it. Pluto, wanna play seven minutes in heaven instead?”

“… I won’t chase you.” says Pluto. “Sure, Saturn. What’s that?”

Luna-Terra rolls over face down; pulls a pillow over his ears and buries his face in the sleeping bag. It smells like Pluto.

He doesn’t get any sleep.

  

♄ + ♇

 

We’re crammed into the bathroom. Saturn stuffed her jacket under the door, so everything is pitch black. Pluto is sitting on the toilet lid, and Saturn is standing and pacing somewhere beyond her, too full of something to stand still but too full of something else to keep moving. She settles for moving and stopping again and again.

“God whats his problem!” says Saturn from out of what looks like literally nowhere. “just, what the fuck is his problem. I mean, he’s gotta know what sleeping with means, right? but I’m not fucking good enough for him. He’s lying. You know he’s lying right, when he says he doesn’t want to. does he get off on torturing himself?”

“Maybe a little.” says Pluto. “But I thought you understood that.” Then, more gently: “This is hell for him, you know.”

“It’s hell for me too!” Saturn hisses. “And how can you, can you sit there and fucking, watch him hurt himself like that? Did you have fun together, playing at being adults, huh? You get your lovey-dovey thing and he gets his own forced fem doujin irl, front row seats, and all he has to pay for it is, all you fucking want from him, is to use him as a pillow!”

Pluto understands what Saturn is trying to say. She’s jealous. But, Pluto knows, if she had been there, and somehow Luna-Terra hadn’t jumped and slammed his head into the ceiling and just run off into the woods with the Devil, that secret spark wouldn’t be enough. She couldn’t enjoy the stillness and warmth. Saturn would take that tiny flame and burn down the cabin, burn down the world or burn herself up trying. Nothing is enough for her! She’s corrosive and greedy and actively self-destructing, isn’t it pitiful? If Luna-Terra cuts into himself quietly and precisely, Saturn just rips bits off with her hands. (Pluto’s own constraints are much more circumspect but sometimes she still catches herself mouthing words that aren’t hers.).

“You’re going to get hurt, Pluto.” says Saturn, as if Pluto isn’t older than her, or as if she cares. Well, that’s a little uncharitable. As if she thinks she can stop her.

“Don’t worry.” says Pluto. “I can handle myself. And a little pain makes things interesting!”

Saturn bumps into the sink. “Ow! fuck!”

"See?" says Pluto, and giggles.

It’s a trick of the light, or of the dark, but for a moment Saturn is sure she can see Pluto’s face: hand held up over her mouth, bright FUCK ME red. She smiles to her left, looking for approval—but there’s nothing there. No spotlights, nobody to show off to. Just the two of them, in what might be a cell miles underground or an infinite starless void (with a sink).

“You know what?” says Pluto. “That’s enough talk about Luna-Terra. Show me why you wanted to play with me~!”

What does Saturn want, when nobody is watching? It’s just her and Pluto: the only two people alive. It’s ridiculous that she doesn’t want to admit it. She asked Pluto to play Seven Minutes in Heaven, which has very simple rules.

Saturn never plays by the rules. Saturn rigs the game. If you lose in the right way, it’s close enough to winning that you can tell yourself you don’t care about the difference. Saturn bends the rules and cheats and that's all well and good, or bad actually, but isn’t that the point? If you show off for boys, if you flaunt yourself to tempt them with the righteousness and the power of forcing you back into devotion, you’re just playing the game better.

But not caring about winning is something else entirely.

Here at camp in the woods in the void that consumes light in the bathroom, we're as far from the eye of god as you can get without being in space.

There's nothing for Saturn to grasp or defy. She can’t rig the game. This is not a game. This is real sin.

There’s no showing off in the dark. no boys either.

Saturn tumbles over into the abyss by sheer inertia.

 

+++

 

We can’t see anything, but the room suddenly feels very small, like we’re incredibly close together. We can feel each other breathing, our pulses racing. Pluto turns on the faucet; reaches out, arms wide in the darkness, waiting expectantly for the inevitability of contact; feels the softness of Saturn’s hand fumbling for hers and the swish of her hair as she just barely flicks the inside of her wrist with her tongue and the numb tingling hypersensitivity that glitters there even after Saturn pulls herself back.

What is hell?

The Lake of Fire, self-inflicted, pain everlasting, other people, here.

(Saturn straddles Pluto, but somehow it’s more like Pluto is holding her up.)

This is hell, isn’t it.

Mhmm.

(Saturn fit the curves of her body to Luna-Terra’s straight lines. Pluto is different. Pluto fits into her.)

Doesn’t it feel good?

Better than I thought it would.

(Saturn tastes like candy looks. Her tongue plucks pure notes on the strings of Pluto’s body.)

Better than anyone could imagine.

Maybe even better than death.

(Pluto is so so still. She’s not really moving, just existing in different positions that Saturn’s mind naturally strings together like an eye watching a movie.)

We can’t fall forever.

That’s called an orbit.

(Pluto is resonating perfectly, thrumming on frequencies that only Saturn can feel.)

All orbits decay.

Not in human time. Not in time that matters.

(Pluto tastes like nothing. Like the inside of Saturn’s own mouth. Like her lips are where they belong.)

Shhhh.

Quiet.

(all we can hear is ourselves and the sound of rushing water. all that there is is ourselves and the sound of rushing water.)

Not yet.

I’m so jealous.

She’s so hot against me. Hot is the wrong word. She’s warm, like an overheating laptop or a rock in the sun or a tile by a fireplace:

that warmth is hers, and mine. That wellspring of warmth has infinite depth, and the deeper I go, the more intensely warm we are together. 

It's so comfortable. Nothing has ever felt this comfortable. Nothing has ever made me feel this comfortable. It's too much. This-

My body isn't made for this, or my body is made for this exactly. It's the most comfortable I've ever been and I can't stay still. 

And neither can she.

 

And then Pluto slips. You can only hold gravity back for so long. She slips right off the toilet, onto the floor, and Saturn falls sideways and catches herself on the wall, which exists again.

Luna-Terra knocks on the door. “I need to pee.”

“Go piss in the woods!” yells Saturn.

Pluto flicks the light on and it’s like nothing happened.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the end approacheth. well, the beginning of the end, anyways.


	8. 1AM - crushing

 

Pluto sits demurely, hiding the smile everybody knows is there behind her cards. Saturn changes position every two minutes or so: on her back, on her belly, on the wall. Luna-Terra’s legs are crossed and he slouches down far enough that his head is almost level with Saturn’s and Plutos; makes him look almost their size.

Red Six. Green Six. Green Nine.

“Sixty nine helll yes” says Saturn. She draws and discards three cards, all yellow. Pluto has four, Saturn has five, and Luna-Terra has two.

“That seems really unintuitive.” says Pluto. She plays a yellow Four. “Six then Nine feels so arbitrary. There’s nothing special about—“

“God, Pluto.” says Saturn. “It’s 69!”

“Nice.” says Luna-Terra.

“Thank you.” says Saturn. “And don’t tell me you just figured that out!”

“… Uno.” says Luna-Terra.

“FUCK” says Saturn.

Pluto smiles and straightens the discard pile.

It’s Saturn’s turn again: she places a straight run of four blue (2 3 4 5) in front of her and taps them all, taking her down to one in hand (she calls Uno first) before she flips the top card of the draw pile up: an Eight, to draw eight cards, none of which she can play. Pluto looks sorry for her; Luna-Terra looks like he might actually know what she’s planning! But she doesn’t think he can stop her.

Pluto plays four nines, all stacked. Saturn reminds her that the alternate win only comes after five; she pouts a little and picks three up. But it works out anyways; Luna-Terra says “Uno” and draws a card.

The house radio crackles.

Saturn plays a skip; Pluto draws one and plays five nines, and that’s the round. Everyone makes their respective noises of victory and defeat. Luna-Terra removes his second sock, and Saturn removes the pants she’s been wearing, which are Pluto’s.

The house radio crackles again.

“I shouldn’t ignore that,” says Pluto. “We. We shouldn’t ignore that.”

“Well who could it be?” says Saturn. “The Captain? God?”

“I’ll answer it.” says Luna-Terra. He’s scrolling through the channels, but the signal is just too weak for some reason. Saturn is putting the cards and various rule sheets away, so Pluto goes to help her, but:

Pluto only picks up a few cards before she looks up, out the too-small window at the distant steady stars, each a sun, each scarcely a pinprick in the Firmament; cold comfort. She feels insignificant under the vast vault of Heaven, like she was never even a person, and she centers herself on that feeling. It pierces her, right through the heart, and she can finally await her rest.

Her cards drop to the ground.

‘… Signal’s not strong enough.” says Luna-Terra, seemingly unaware. “Saturn. Help me fix it.”

Saturn reluctantly puts Pluto’s pants back on.

 

♁ + ♄

 

Luna-Terra clambers easily up onto the roof; Saturn struggles a little but looks very proud of herself. It’s flat enough to sit on up here, if not too comfortable. The moon is waxing or waning and the night is cloudless and the stars are very far away. Saturn fiddles with the antenna on one end of the house for a bit until she decides it’s fixed, probably. Luna-Terra looks out at the woods and the lights there, out at the shifting patterns his mind forms out of the darkness, at nothing in particular. We don’t want to go back inside, back to comforting Pluto and the illusion of safety.

Tonight is a night for monstrousness. Not that either of us are monsters.

Yet.

Saturn is the first to break the silence.

“So what changed?”

“…Nothing.” says Luna-Terra. “Pluto needs time.”

“Really?” says Saturn. “Is this all for her, being alone with me up here?”

“Yeah.” says Luna-Terra.

“Bullshit.” says Saturn. “But I won’t press you on it.”

A chill night breeze blows by, sucking the heat away from our hands and faces.

“Hey.” says Saturn.

“What.” says Luna-Terra.

“I was just thinking,” says Saturn “that since we’re both here and all, and we’re never gonna see each other again…”

“No.” says Luna-Terra.

“jeez.” says Saturn. “I’m not trying to get in your pants! Wanna fight?”

“…No.” says Luna-Terra.

“Am I not annoying enough then.” says Saturn. “What are you even looking for? I know you made out with that blonde chick, whatshername, pixie-cut flatass.”

“She wouldn’t leave me alone!” says Luna-Terra, like a child who knows he’s done something wrong but isn’t sure exactly what.

“And you think _that’s_ going to make her leave you alone?” Saturn is incredulous. “God! Are you stupid or just an asshole!”

“Both.” says Luna-Terra. “What was I supposed to do?!”

“Reject her at least!” says Saturn. “Grow a fucking spine! She’d get over it. But nooo, it feels too good to have some hapless girl treat you like god. You’re that fucking desperate for someone to care. So fucking, fight me!”

“Ouch.” says Luna-Terra. “And what about you?”

“What about me.” says Saturn.

“’Grow a fucking spine.’” says Luna-Terra. “’But no, it feels too good. You want boys to treat you like god. You’re that fucking desperate for someone to care.’”

“So you were listening!” says Saturn. “Also you literally have the opportunity to punch me! Why are you still holding back?”

“I don’t hit girls.” says Luna-Terra, like he has any kind of principles at all besides the principle underlying pretty much his entire life: just running away from all his problems.

But that doesn’t even work! If he could outrun his problems he wouldn’t be here at camp in the worst fucking place in the world. And if Saturn tried to point out that it didn’t work… He’d just run away again! What an asshole!

“oh FUCK YOU” says Saturn. Pluto has to be hearing this down below them but Saturn is long past caring. “Bodies are, are nothing! That’s why Pluto had to dare you for those truths; we all knew you’d just say some emo shit about truths being worse than dares and neither of us wanted to put up with your shit! but I’m fucking done with that.”

“Shut up!” says Luna-Terra—

“No, you just break their hearts to feel better about yourself! You fucking get off on it, don’t you! Don’t you, Daddy!? Punish me, Daddy! I’ve been a bad fucking girl and you’re a piece of shit who hurts girls for fun NYAH—“

“stop—“ says Luna-Terra—

“NYAH NYAH I CANT HEAR YOU AND ALSO I DONT CARE FUCK YOU. You really, really hurt her, you know that? Of course you do. It makes your dick hard. I made out with her like, four fucking times, and she still isn’t over you; how’s that? Are you hard now? And what the hell do you think you’re doing to Pluto?”

“Enough.” says Luna-Terra in a voice that reminds Saturn of the last man she made out with a girl for. He sounds like he did when he pulled that knife on Group South. But Saturn doesn’t know how to stop, and she wouldn’t even if she did, and she really truly is genuinely pissed the fuck off.

“Too little too late. Pluto already gets it. Whyd you think she gave that bonfire sermon!. She knows just how disgusting you are and she’s good enough to want you to feel better anyways! Girls are things and things get used and thrown away; jack off once or twice and toss that tenga. But the really fucked up thing?” Saturn takes a breath, just for effect. “You want your fleshlight to tell you you’re a good person. And Pluto absolutely fucking will!”

“Leave Pluto out of this.” says Luna-Terra.

“Excuse me! If you want a girl to listen you say ‘leave Pluto out of this, pet’, or ‘kitten’, or ‘bitch’!” says Saturn. “Look at me. I’m the important one. Pluto and, Holly? I think her name is? and all the other girls are too kind or scared or lovestruck to stop you, but I can fucking take it. Hit me.”

“I don’t get it. says Luna-Terra. “Just let me go. You got to be mad so please just let me go. You’re having so much fun finally getting to say all these things and you said them so you won. Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because you insist on being the fucking girl!” says Saturn. “What the Fuck is your damage! Being hot and strong and having people listen to you isn’t e-fucking-nough for you, Daddy! You want it all. You run cause you want someone to chase you. You want to be cared about but you don’t have enough of a spine to make girls care back. God I bet you fucking crossdress, you faggot. Pluto gets to be an object; Pluto gets people to care about her; Pluto gets love and affection and attention for free whether she fucking wants it or not!”

Does Saturn think “Luna-Terra wears girl’s clothing?” No. But she’s noticed, maybe consciously maybe not, that Luna-Terra wants all the nice things about being a girl and none of the drawbacks. Not that Saturn wants those drawbacks either, but that wanting makes her fucking sick.

“Do you have any idea what the rest of her life is going to be like? When all of me but that skirt is gone?”

Luna-Terra shucks his pullover, or he tries. There’s an awkward moment where Saturn isn’t quite sure he’s going to be able to pull it up over his head, and then his gross ratty fake-girlish hair spills out, almost white in the moonlight. The black t-shirt underneath is a little tighter but that isn't the body Saturn's paying attention to, at just this moment.

“…But that’s what you fucking want, isn’t it.” says Saturn. “You think you want to be thrown away. You fucking idiot. Take it from someone who’s been there: you stop being human.”

Click-click. Luna-Terra’s knife is in his hand, iridescent watermelon colors in the moonlight. For a single moment of pure exhilaration, Saturn thinks he’s actually going to just knife her; that she’s about to get penetrated—but the knife rips the hoodie instead, right down the center. Luna-Terra ties his right fist with a makeshift glove first, then his left.

“If I seriously hurt you, it means you were right.” he says.

“So this way you can tell yourself you did what you could.” says Saturn. “You limp-wristed bitch.”

The crickets are still fucking going.

Luna-Terra throws the first punch, but it’s a feint. Saturn evades by virtue of not caring if she actually gets hit in the face, and then the second hits her in the stomach.

It’s kind of funny! Also it really hurts, even with that half-jacket padding. Luna-Terra holds his fists up like he thinks he’s a fucking boxer or something; like this fight runs on rules and points, like he gets to tap out. Saturn usually fights with her body in other ways but she’s a fast learner, fast enough to understand that she can’t win like this.

Luna-Terra lets her go.

That’s a mistake. “Don’t _fucking_ pity me.” Saturn snarls. She chews her gum like it’s tough meat in her mouth and comes at Luna-Terra’s left this time, takes a smack upside the head and hooks her leg clumsily around his—

But Luna-Terra steps in without even thinking, and Saturn’s on her back foot both metaphorically and physically. Of course she can’t throw him off balance, but if she can get in close—

And there he comes. Bingo. About fucking time.

Saturn spits right at Luna-Terra's eye and manages to get one hand into his hair and then she finds herself face up on the sandpaper grit of the roof, still feeling his hand on her shoulder where he spun and shoved her, grinning so wide it hurts even on top of the wave of pain just now hitting her and the asphalt-sealed tiles rasping at her skin even through Pluto’s pants. This fucking rules. She feels like her face is going to split open.

He’s ready to stomp on her or grab her or something but what exactly doesn’t matter; all that matters is that he’s close to the edge of the roof—

but here’s what Saturn missed: Luna-Terra doesn’t actually need to see. He’s a little less steady without depth perception but he isn’t really moving based on sight at all. When she rolls to push him off he just isn’t there.

Saturn’s face down, cheek on the harsh sandpaper roof with Luna-Terra’s beat-up once-white sneaker on her head, so of course she moans.

“… How would you even get off without somebody willing to hurt you.” says Luna-Terra.

“There’s always somebody.” says Saturn. “Let me up? I promise I’ll be good.”

Luna-Terra isn’t even breathing hard, but Saturn promised, so he holds himself back. Even still, he almost dodges when she lunges for him, but he’s not used to having his hair free, and that hair has gum in it, so it gets in the way of his sight.

His arms go back and he catches himself. Saturn could lean down, straddle him like she straddled Pluto, just fucking take what she wants. Both of them know it. Both of their bodies are very ready, and both of them are picking up on the other's signals.

Saturn swallows. “It’s fucking cold.” She says, looking over the edge of the roof.

“You go down first.” says Luna-Terra.

“Too scared to turn your back on me?” says Saturn. “ _Good._ ”

“A little.” says Luna-Terra. “But more I want you to catch me.”

Both of us are laughing. It’s such a stupid joke, but we’re laughing like it’s the funniest thing in the world. We laugh like our bodies are convulsing, trying to rip themselves apart turning inside out, laughing like we’re high and drunk and horny and it’s the last night we get before, before something unspeakable. And maybe it is!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> geez this one got long!!!! the beginning's pacing feels a lot like oldschool crack fic.  
> next up: TIME FOR ENDINGS! im real excited to unveil these devil forms.


	9. 2AM - Voice of God (Pink Route)

 

“Well,” says Saturn. Her clothes are ripped and scuffed and her face visibly scraped. “We fixed the fucking radio.” She pops a new stick of gum in her mouth to keep her breath minty fresh.

“You fixed it.” says Luna-Terra. His clothes are old and well-worn (or ill-worn) but not ravaged like Saturn’s. The old scar on his face shines a different color than the rest of his skin, and he scratches idly at his hip with his closed knife.

“Okay!” says Pluto. She drops the clothing she’s been folding back into her bag and zips it shut. “Let’s call god.”

We hook our radios up to the house in a circle and hold onto a length of copper wire, feeling ridiculous and vulnerable and resigned. We pray.

“You don’t need to pray.” says Saturn.

“Mhmm!” says Pluto. “I know! But I do it anyways.”

“That’s normal.” says Luna-Terra, which is as close to “I do too” as anyone is going to get from him tonight.

“Yeah.” says Saturn. “Just saying.”

We hold hands as we look for the signal. Once we have it, finding god will be easy. He’s always on the same channel: 109.8 FM. The devil lurks in the spaces between that only ever get passed through, and sometimes people hear a bit of him by accident.

By the time we find god he’s already talking. He never says “for those listening.” God expects attentiveness.

—given over unto insatiable hunger, always empty and never full. And yet this too is another yoke; for the worth of a humbled woman is more than rubies—

God sounds like every boy you are afraid of talking at once.

—for _I_ am against thee. Behold now thy own nakedness; thine wretched nature; and know the Lord has declared you Abomination against Him. If thy right hand causeth thee to sin, it _will_ be cut off. If thy left hand causeth thee to sin, it _will_ be cut off. If thy tongue speaks perversions against the LORD, it will be pierced for thine iniquities and thou shalt be lead by it as an animal—

“Ugh.” says Saturn. “What a waste of time.”

“Why’d you fix the radio.” says Luna-Terra.

“Fuck off.” says Saturn.

—Each of you will choose. It is certain that the devil is coming.

Pluto says nothing at all in a way that tells us all just how nervous she is.

It is certain.

Luna-Terra looks resigned.

It is absolutely certain the devil is already here.

Saturn pops her bubblegum, sucks it back into her mouth, pops it again.

Parables 1:1. The devil is the shadow of man cast from the light of god. The meaning of this parable is that there is no devil.

Tomorrow’s humidity is scheduled for 100, with mild. And now for the news—

Luna-Terra turns the radio off.

Pluto smiles sadly. “Are you going to turn God off too? Some things you can’t run away from.”

Luna-Terra shrugs. “I guess.”

“You know, I actually think I agree with him on this one.” says Saturn. “How stupid would you have to be to just let the devil fuck you up?”

“Pretty stupid!” says Pluto. “But the devil just kind of happens! I can’t say what anyone would do in that situation.”

“You mean what I would do in that situation.” says Saturn. “But, you know, I’m pretty stupid.”

“You?” says Luna-Terra. He closes his eyes a little. “Don’t pity me.”

“Yeah.” says Saturn. “Me.”

Luna-Terra closes his eyes, because he can’t bear to roll them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's real short  
> so go read the next one! and then the next after that and then the next after that. that's right: FOUR CHAPTERS even though 3 are short!


	10. 3AM - Eversion Impulse (Pink Ending I)

 

Saturn stands up and stretches. She pulls her arms up over her head and leans left and right, then forward and backward. And then she smears her gum right on the cabin wall.

The devil will be hers.

“I figured it out, Pluto.” she says, eyes still on the ceiling. “and you’re absolutely fucking disgusting.”

Pluto smiles a little, wistfully. “I really did try!” she says. “But you wouldn’t believe that.”

“Nope.” says Saturn. “I said some pretty fucked up stuff to Luna-Terra on the roof, but he’s an idiot who didn’t get it. Most of it. I’m thinking the person who really deserved to have me go off on them was you.”

Luna-Terra looks confused. Saturn figures that’s on him, if he’s stupid enough to not understand what’s really going on.

But she never was the type to resist any kind of temptation, especially the temptation to gloat.

“Aw, Loony,” she says in that voice she uses when she wants to drive boys mad (with anger, and.), “Pluto already knows! Some secrets are only for girls! If I tell you it’ll be like a slumber party where we all stayed up late and did each others nails and played truth or dare and got wasted. You want to gossip about boys next? But I’ll tell you, because I’m done playing their stupid fucking game.”

Saturn’s voice sounds off. Luna-Terra doesn’t know exactly why or how, but he doesn’t need to to know that something is very very wrong. He keeps his eyes on her and his focus on his radio, still hooked up to the house circuit.

“Sometimes,” says Saturn, “they do it with paper or candy or a flower that gets passed around. They always shoo all the boys out of the room first.”

She holds up a wrapped stick of gum with two fingers.  

“So. Luna-Terra. You’ve got a really girly name. This is you, you bright little innocent _thing_. Shiny silver wrapping, mmm it says here “Refreshing Minty Taste”. How does maidenhood feel?”

Luna-Terra has no idea how to answer the question. If Luna-Terra knew how to answer that question he’d be at camp for an entirely different reason. “...Great. I guess.”

“Great.” says Saturn. “Fucking fantastic. Boys and men give you presents and attention; women dress you up and offer you advice; other girls are nice to you even as you watch them reject boys. Sure you don’t get to decide a whole lot but little kids don’t get to decide anything anyways. Girls are princesses. Or at least I was!”

Pluto knows she’s being taunted, but she’s not scared. Pluto is aware of her radio’s location. Pluto is aware of the locations of many radios. Pluto is aware of many things, and right now, she’s aware of how Saturn wants her to respond.

“Until we aren’t.” she says.

“That’s a nice ‘we’ there isn’t it,” says Saturn, “from somebody who didn’t have to do any of this. But yeah. Until we aren’t. The first hit is always free! Everything has a price, and once you start to ripen god calls in his debt. And what do you have to pay with, intrinsic to your being, Miss Gum Stick? What the fuck is your worth?

Saturn peels the wrapper delicately off the top half with her lips and teeth and tongue. She leaves bright pink lipstick marks everywhere but the gum itself, which is perfect virginal white.

“So you take your top off.”

Luna-Terra can’t watch this. Luna-Terra can’t look away.

Pluto is breathing a little more heavily than usual, but her hands are very still.

“Look at you. Pure as the driven snow. Flat gum just looks pasty so of course you come pre-printed with curves to give you a little texture. And now we don’t need this anymore—“

Saturn drops the wrapper and rips her own shirt open. The buttons fall to the floor.

“Did you like that? Did you like your garnishes; did they let you pretend that you weren’t just meat? Stand before the face of god and know your nakedness and feel shame, cause that’s _sexy,_ baby! Humiliation is fun and also its what you fucking signed up for when you got born a girl. So stop being so fucking jealous.”

“Do you want your skirt back.” says Pluto.

“What I want back,” says Saturn, “is what that skirt meant. You can’t give me that. What I want now is to show you exactly what that means. Anyways Luna you need to protect your virtue! A man can have virtue in strength or courage or honor; a girl’s single outstanding value is the fact that she hasn’t been fucked. Except, you can’t protect yourself and something inside you is going to respond to that touch whether you wanted it or not. You are throughly and inevitably fucked. Which is the difference between you and an actual girl! You have a way out. You can eat instead of being eaten. I know girls who would kill for that. I would kill for that.”

Pluto stands too. She undoes the skirt without looking down and throws it right on the floor, in front of Saturn. Her hair flutters just a little, like there’s a wind only she can feel moving through it.

“I SAID,” says Saturn, “I don’t fucking want it. What I want is to tell you how badly it hurts. What I want is to show you. See this gum, stupid Luna-Terra, perfect Pluto? This is what got done to me, and this is what I’m going to do you.”

Saturn chews with her mouth open and her eyes narrowed. She spits the gum out into her hand and smears it down her cheek, never breaking eye contact.

“Do you want it now? Could anyone want it now? It’s trash.”

Saturn pops the gum back in, chews it anyways. “Nobody could want you but me. Are you sure you don’t just want to give up?”

“…No.” says Luna-Terra.

“Always running away. Figures.” says Saturn. “And Pluto, I know you won’t.”

Pluto gives her a sweet dazzling smile and the abyss inside her roils.

“Well, I thought I should at least ask! When you get rid of me you’ll have to go back out there. I guarantee you nobody else is going to consume you as nicely as I am! I’m _really_ good with my tongue. Won’t you just be mine?”

“This is your last chance.” says Pluto. “Devil, I rebuke thee.”

Luna-Terra knows that he has his knife in his pocket if he can’t get to the radios in time.

Saturn smiles. She thinks about the way Pluto’s lips felt; about the sensation of Luna-Terra’s hand on her ass. She thinks about what it was like to sit in the cabin alone while the other two went out on patrol.

Her smile grows wider—too wide. Her head lolls sideways like her neck is broken and her smile unzips like lightning running down her body, splitting her jaw to cunt right through her sternum.

“Your loss.” she says, like she’s talking with her normal mouth. It’s not hard to adjust, not with this body that’s still mostly hers. Or was she always like this? Teetering on the line between human and something else entirely (but not Entirely). Saturn has more important things to focus on. Her ribs splay open and out and her new lips and teeth drip sparking pink poison that pools on the floor around her bare feet and drips through the boards. There’s nothing behind those teeth, just an empty blankness.

She’s so hungry.

“Luna-Terra. I hope you know I just wanted to teach you how to be a man? Don’t you dare go easy on me.”

 


	11. 4AM - James 3:8 (Pink Ending II)

 

Saturn’s head and limbs dangle uselessly back like she’s in the throes of mind-numbing ecstasy or pain. The lips that extend down along her body ripple and twist and bloom open like fleshy petals, each set enclosing another all the way down to the emptiness inside her.

Thin tongues reach out like grasping fingers, dripping with delicious pink juices. She wants us to feel good and belong, even if she has to force that nectar down our throats again. She’s so pitiful, projecting onto us like that, but we can’t let ourselves feel sorry for her. Or we can, but it won’t stop us.

The devil is lonely. We kicked out the devil and it misses us. It keeps begging for us to take it back, for us to let it in.

And Saturn did.

Of course she did. She was compassionate deep down.

And she still is. But that doesn’t matter anymore.

It calls out with love and hatred and want and need. It’ll suck us dry and grind our husks to powder. Every wish of the heart belongs to it. Hurt me! Let me hurt you! Love me! Let me love you! Hurt me break me shape me explore my inner secrets tear me open touch me see me kill me.

We chose to turn our backs.

And the devil only ever gets one moment.

For revenge, for desire, for "please play with me.”

But there is nothing to fear when there is two against the devil.

Luna-Terra brings bright steel. The wicked arc of his radio shines with moonlight, and the cold of it burns.

Pluto’s voice rings out, scintillating in the night. “In the name of the LORD, I’ll punish you.”

Our radios scream and crash against her and the devil is destroyed.

 

 


	12. 5AM - cinders on the wind

 

We’re sitting by the bonfire as it slowly burns down. The incense smells horrible, but we’ve had enough of things that smell good. Pluto still doesn’t have any pants on, and she smeared her lipstick off onto the back of her hand, where it sits like an angry red bruise. A couple people made jokes—“He fucked the devil right out of her” and “Saturn always was a cunt!”—but mostly we’ve been left alone.

That suits us just fine. Pluto leans in on Luna-Terra’s arm, her head tilted onto his shoulder in a way eerily reminiscent of the way Saturn had flopped over bonelessly, and Luna-Terra leans back on her, just a little. We watch the fire hiss and crackle with sap.

What is there to say? We turned our backs on Saturn and turned ourselves toward the unspeakable secret that drew us together. But no fucking way are we going to talk about that. Jealousy coils like heavy wet rope in Luna-Terra’s stomach.

“Fuck.” says Luna-Terra.

“Yeah.” says Pluto.

Fuck.

We need to move. We can’t—we can’t sit still. We need to be somewhere else, somewhere that isn't here. We walk through the woods, back to camp, just in time to see a fancy car with very tinted windows pull up right up into the middle area where cars never drive.

The bonfire captain walks up to it. We’re not used to hearing his voice sound so deferential. “We called you right away, Sir. Yes, Sir, you certainly did call it. She’s over there at one of the picnic tables.”

We can’t make out the reply, if there is one, but an arm reaches out and beckons with a single finger. Saturn rises like she’s being pulled by strings and walks over. We can’t see her face but we know there’s no light in her eyes.

She pulls the back door open and climbs in.

The car stays still for a while. We hold hands as we wait for something, but we don't know what. A sign? Those tinted windows allow Saturn some dignity, or they would if she wanted it. If she needed it. If she even cared, or is even capable of caring.

Nothing comes. Eventually the car drives away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa. that was a lot of text to make for me!


	13. 2AM - Voice of God (Steel Route)

 

“Well,” says Saturn. Her clothes are ripped and scuffed and her face visibly scraped. “We fixed the fucking radio.” She pops a new stick of gum in her mouth to keep her breath minty fresh.

“You fixed it.” says Luna-Terra. His clothes are old and well-worn (or ill-worn) but not ravaged like Saturn’s. The old scar on his face shines a different color than the rest of his skin, and he scratches idly at his hip with his closed knife.

“Okay!” says Pluto. She drops the clothing she’s been folding back into her bag and zips it shut. “Let’s call god.”

We hook our radios up to the house in a circle and hold onto a length of copper wire, feeling ridiculous and vulnerable and resigned. We pray.

“You don’t need to pray.” says Saturn.

“Mhmm!” says Pluto. “I know! But I do it anyways.”

“That’s normal.” says Luna-Terra, which is as close to “I do too” as anyone is going to get from him tonight.

“Yeah.” says Saturn. “Just saying.”

We hold hands as we look for the signal. Once we have it, finding god will be easy. He’s always on the same channel: 109.8 FM. The devil lurks in the spaces between that only ever get passed through, and sometimes people hear a bit of him by accident.

By the time we find god he’s already talking. He never says “for those listening.” God expects attentiveness.

—and pierce it with nails of blessed iron. Place the casket into a crucible for seven days and seven nights and an eighth day and night, and quench it in the deepest ocean. The name of that casket is Flesh—

God sounds like every boy you are afraid of talking at once.

—given over to wild beasts, and beset with plagues and boils, and made constantly aware of its own suffering. For it to know its wretchedness is pleasing unto the LORD. Break it with blades and fire and shame upon a mirror as it begs to tear out its eyes. Break it upon the rack of itself. Offer it succor and tear it away and mock it for its foolishness. Spit upon it. Urinate upon it. Defecate upon it. For it is unclean, saith the LORD in his wisdom and mercy; let it be tormented for ever and ever and ever and—

“Ugh.” says Saturn. “What a waste of time.”

“Why’d you fix the radio.” says Luna-Terra.

“Fuck off.” says Saturn.

—Each of you will choose. It is certain that the devil is coming.

Pluto says nothing at all in a way that tells us all just how nervous she is.

It is certain.

Luna-Terra looks resigned.

It is absolutely certain the devil is already here.

Saturn pops her bubblegum, sucks it back into her mouth, pops it again.

Parables 1:1. The devil is the shadow of man cast from the light of god. The meaning of this parable is that there is no devil.

Tomorrow’s humidity is scheduled for 100, with mild. And now for the news—

 

Luna-Terra turns the radio off. His hands are shaking.

“God, I’m hungry.” says Saturn, in an attempt to change the mood. “What about you guys?”

Luna-Terra says nothing.

“You never eat anything.” says Saturn. “You are literally the only guy I’ve ever seen eat a quarter of a burger. Who even does that?”

Pluto smiles sadly. “That’s not working. Was that what you wanted, Saturn?”

“HELL no” Saturn says. “I only went up there and fixed the radio cause Mister Luna-Tic figured you needed time alone!”

“Really.” says Pluto, like she isn’t surprised at all. “You couldn’t have just asked me, Luna-Terra?

“…I don’t know…” Luna-Terra mumbles, eyes downcast.

“Well, being honest with your feelings is important. Try to remember next time, okay?”

“If there _is_ a next time.” says Saturn.

Nobody says anything after that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's another 4 chapter chunk!!!!!!


	14. 3AM - another fucking chain (Steel Ending I)

 

Luna-Terra is sitting with his legs tucked into his chest and his arms wrapped around them, like he thinks he can make himself small (but the closer he pulls his legs the broader his back becomes). His eyes are closed, because he can’t look at Saturn or Pluto (but in his mind they’re still talking and their voices are so soft and light and playful). He is breathing with his ribcage, feeling the air move in and out; feeling himself expand and contract and expand a little more and contract a little less every time, again and again and again.

The devil will be his.

He can feel something churning under his skin. Tears are running down his too-long nose and grotesque jaw like he’s a gargoyle in an acid rainstorm. He pulls his hands off his legs and clamps them over his ears and tucks his elbows in close to his body.

Saturn breaks the silence. “Hey.”

He shivers under the weight of her gaze. It’s like a physical pressure; a spell cast by looking. She strides towards him and flicks her head upwards. “Get up.”

He tries, but his limbs don’t work the way they’re supposed to.

“Get. UP” she says; and this time he does, pushing himself up off the cabin wall. Everything here is warped; the roof is too low and his body takes up too much space.

Saturn takes his head in both her hands and pulls him down to her and kisses him deeply.

She tastes _narcotic_. It’s not Luna-Terra’s first kiss, but it has that same tongue-in-a-light-socket feeling. Luna-Terra knows how to start a kiss (feel out the line of tension between the two of you and pull it tight or let it slack slowly; inexorably. Fall down a gravity well)—and how to run away once he starts thinking again. Saturn knows how to keep a kiss going. Actually it turns out that Saturn is very very good at kissing: good enough that his whole body is making little involuntary movements, good enough that he barely notices when one of her hands grabs one of his arms and pulls it down around her waist, good enough that he doesn’t resist when she wiggles her hips just a little more blatantly trying to slide that hand downwards.

And then she gets rougher. She shoves her tongue into his mouth and that’s fine, he actually really likes it, but then for a second he feels too many teeth when she shoves him backwards into the wall. He can read her just fine like this, maybe better than he’s ever been able to, and he finally understands what she’s saying:

She wants him to take charge. She really does care. She wants to save him. She’s the devil, slippery and live-wire wriggly in front of him, and she wants him to push her over and tie her up and cut out that piece of him that’s screaming.

But he can’t do that. He really can’t.

He doesn’t even want to. It’s another fucking obligation. All Luna-Terra wants is to not have to deal with all these burdens: obligations like chains on his limbs and mind and behavior and Saturn really isn’t helping him do that.

Saturn pulls away, looking hurt. She spits on the floor like she can get the taste of him out of her mouth and coldly wipes her lipstick off his lips. It comes away bright pink on her white sleeve.

“You kiss like a _girl_.” she says.

Luna-Terra decides to keep whatever shreds of dignity he has left (who is he kidding! he just doesn’t want to be laughed at again) and bolts right out the cabin door, into the suffocating night and the devil’s waiting arms.

+++

 

Luna-Terra runs until he can’t see the patrol lights and siren stands anymore, until the only thing he has to see by is the moonlight filtering down through the trees, and then he runs a little more, stumbling on roots and slipping on rocks and leaves; and when he feels like he’s gone far enough he just stays down, collapsed on his hands and knees, a breathless sobbing wreck.

(and still the sirens blare)

He feels like there’s a storm inside him, or an ocean; maybe dark water maybe magma. He half-considers just flopping over and jacking off because sometimes that helps a little by fogging his mind up but mostly it just makes him feel shitty about other stuff, which is he thinks sounds pretty good. Self-flagellation over objectifying women is nice and safe and makes him feel like he could be a good person for wanting something. That’s why it hurts to touch himself, why he can’t stand intimacy. There is no other reason.

Not that he’ll care in a few hours.

That’s how Pluto finds him, lying on his side on the forest floor flipping his knife thinking about things that hurt him. She turns the flashlight on his body like it’ll pin him down, but she’s considerate enough to keep it off his face.

“You didn’t run very far.” she says, hands on her hips. “You wanted to be chased, didn’t you.”

Luna-Terra doesn’t deny it. Swish Click Swish goes the knife.

“I know what it’s like.” says Pluto.

“Do you.” says Luna-Terra. Click Click Swish Click-Click Swish.

“Yes, I do.” says Pluto. “And you know I do. Roll up your sleeves for me?”

Luna-Terra doesn’t need to. The look in his eyes is proof enough.

“Tonight is a night of sin. Good boys can’t become good girls; that’s just not how it works. If I wanted to be a girl I had to be a bad one.” says Pluto.

“What a fucking choice.” says Luna-Terra. He rolls onto his back and looks up at the night sky. He misses his hoodie.

“I’m no Khlyst,” says Pluto. “All kinds of devilry goes on in the cabins. Kissing, fucking, homosexuality. As long as the devil is expunged, certain liberties aren’t punished. Or they receive just punishment as the inevitable result of sin, depending on how you look at it.”

“Get to the fucking point.” says Luna-Terra, who is opening and closing that knife right over his face like he doesn’t care if it falls.

“When the sun comes up the skirt comes off.” says Pluto. “You’re not the only one who suffers, you know.”

“Okay.” says Luna-Terra. “Sure. Now leave me the fuck alone.”

“No.” says Pluto.

“Please.” says Luna-Terra.

“What I’m saying, and I really can’t believe I’m saying this,” Pluto continues, “is that it might be better for you if you everted.”

Luna-Terra is surprised to discover he can still be surprised. He sits up, knife forgotten.

“It’s an old clinical term, I know, but it makes sense. Evert the invert to make a real person with a real backbone. Hmmh.” Pluto just kind of shrugs. “I would if I could. I really would.”

“…Then why don’t you?” asks Luna-Terra.

“Because I have people who depend on me. Not that they care about me, but they need me.” Pluto says. “But sometimes, like tonight, I forget that. Now I get to be jealous of you for a change. What’s it like to be free?”

“I have no idea.” says Luna-Terra. “The devil isn’t freeing at all. It’s just another fucking chain.”

Saturn is running towards them. She’s seen the flashlight, or Pluto signaled her. It doesn’t matter. Her radio is already in her hand, and Pluto’s radio hangs off her waist.

The two girls face Luna-Terra, who cowers, hunched over like a wild animal in the spotlight with a predator’s bright eyes. Saturn slaps Pluto’s radio into her hand like she’s trying to prove something.

“I’m sorry.” says Saturn. “I’m so so sorry.”

Luna-Terra snarls in response.

Even still, he’s untouchable. Or now is he more untouchable than he ever was? He can’t be pushed or pulled or cut or hit because he can’t be touched. The only way to reach him is to cheat, so Pluto cheats.

She drops her radio and pulls her shoulders back and steps forward, hands empty. She doesn’t touch him. She just reaches out. You’ve run so far and I’ve found you. I care. Do you care?

She places her hand on his shoulder and there’s a sound like an in-sink garbage disposal.

“Ow.” she says. She drops the flashlight; her hand is bloody. Saturn knocks Pluto back with her shoulder and plants herself in front of her. It’s heroic and noble and fucking stupid, what Pluto tried to do. Saturn has to impress that reality on Pluto before she gets herself killed or worse. Her radio is humming with holy frequencies, and the thing that was Luna-Terra instinctively recoils.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "lying on his side on the forest floor flipping his knife"  
> lol  
> "thinking about things that hurt him"  
> :(


	15. 4AM - "---- --" (Steel Ending II)

 

She’s beautiful. Saturn thinks she might be the hottest girl she’s ever seen: a perfect featureless ethereal creature of warmth and light, with perfect curves and more-than-perfect legs. And then the knives tear their way out of her.

We can still see her through the gaps: glimpse her thrashing panicked limbs and terrified features.

Those blades are Luna-Terra’s writ large. The pink-green anodized steel is unmistakable.

Some of the knives unfold into limbs: too thin, too graceful, with three segments instead of the standard human two. Each, and the hands at their ends, are covered in razor-sharp blades. She clutches at herself, running them up and down her body; over her breasts and genitalia, raking at herself over and over again. Chunks come out like she’s made of jello, but too-slim hands with wickedly pointed fingers pluck them up and stick them on again almost tenderly, like they’re mocking her.

Saturn levels her radio at it; Pluto doesn’t stop her. She knows it would be a mercy.

The thing that was Luna-Terra is past language now, but it still recognizes the radio, or maybe it understands that the will of god is going to kill it.

It tries to run, but only manages to topple over and land on a bed of metal arms. Its body contorts in a silent scream and it scrabbles at its blank face like it doesn’t realize it can control the arms.

…It probably can’t.

An arm reaches down and pulls another knife free from inside it; more arms patch up the damage and shred it further. This knife has a handle itself covered in spikes, and they guide it to its own glowing arm and wrap its fingers around it and guide it up and sink it deep into the thing’s face.

It learns fast. When it mutilates itself the arms stop for a second, stroke its body tenderly. It hesitates and the arms move in, and it does it again—but they only wait half a second this time.

It writhes, on the floor, back arched; pulls more knives out of itself and pushes them back in. An arm plunges through its leg and rakes at its thigh.

The devil is lonely. We kicked out the devil and it misses us. It keeps begging for us to take it back, for us to let it in.

And Luna-Terra did.

It reaches out ineffectually. Maybe it’s asking for love, or maybe it’s asking for death. Maybe it doesn’t understand either of those things. It’s a wish; no, a prayer for only one thing.

We know it knows what pain is, but we girls have a duty.

That thing isn't something we even want to look at. We work together, unzipping Pluto's sleeping bag and throwing it over it. And then we take out our radios, and we chose to harden our hearts.

The devil only ever gets one moment.

For revenge, for pity, for “---- --!”, the chilling voiceless scream of pain.

But there is nothing to fear when there is two against the devil.

Saturn brings the lightning. It crackles like dead leaves in the tines of her radio, bright enough that it leaves trails in her vision.

Pluto’s voice rings out, pure and scintillating against the blurry moonlit night. “In the name of the LORD, I’ll punish you.”

Our radios scream and crash against it and the devil is destroyed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> save me? fuck me? kill me?
> 
> "help me"


	16. 5AM - self-hatred

 

Pluto picks up a scrap of Summer Scout Uniform and another of something she can tell was once a black bra. She won’t show it to Saturn. We’re in the woods, where we won’t be overheard. Luna-Terra is laid out on a table at camp, covered in very shallow wounds. We can’t stand the sight of him. He’s everything we can’t allow, everything we fought against.

Saturn has the skirt again. Pluto has the pants again. And it was Righteous before the eyes of god, and lo! he said it was good.

“Fuck.” says Saturn. “You waited for me to do that. You let me play bad cop so you could play, I dunno? Good cop? Worse cop? What did you tell him before I got there?”

“You brought me the radio.” says Pluto. “You wanted me to use it, to feel how brutal it would be to hurt that thing with my own hands. I know how to use a radio. Singing hurts more, and it should hurt.”

“I get it.” says Saturn. “I really do. But now I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Isn’t that gay.” says Pluto.

“You have to be a boy, right?” says Saturn. “So maybe a little, but not in a way that anybody else will ever be able to see. And that’s the important thing.”

“So practical!” says Pluto. “I kind of hate it.”

“That’s fine.” says Saturn. “As long as you don’t hate yourself.”

That hangs in the air between us. There’s no way to unsee what we saw; no way to tell ourselves we don’t know what happens.

“And what about you?” says Pluto. “I don’t want you to hate yourself either, you know.”

“…Every girl hates herself at least a little.” says Saturn. “Welcome to the club. And if you end up hating me and I end up hating you instead, eventually? That’s not great, but we won’t be, you know. Like that. Like it. Disgusting.”

"We have each other."  says Pluto. 

We kiss. We enjoy the tastes of each other’s mouths and the warmth of each other’s bodies, but our arms hang still by our sides. Probably they always will.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for following me on this horrid painful journey! i hope everybody is excited for the Void Ending and Pluto's Devil, and, of course, for the Devil Herself and the upcoming True End.
> 
> LT in lowercase is "lt". what a coincidence.


	17. 2AM - Voice of God (Void Route)

 

“Well,” says Saturn. Her clothes are ripped and scuffed and her face visibly scraped. “We fixed the fucking radio.” She pops a new stick of gum in her mouth to keep her breath minty fresh.

“You fixed it.” says Luna-Terra. His clothes are old and well-worn (or ill-worn) but not ravaged like Saturn’s. The old scar on his face shines a different color than the rest of his skin, and he scratches idly at his hip with his closed knife.

“Okay!” says Pluto. She drops the clothing she’s been folding back into her bag and zips it shut. “Let’s call god.”

We hook our radios up to the house in a circle and hold onto a length of copper wire, feeling ridiculous and vulnerable and resigned. We pray.

“You don’t need to pray.” says Saturn.

“Mhmm!” says Pluto. “I know! But I do it anyways.”

“That’s normal.” says Luna-Terra, which is as close to “I do too” as anyone is going to get from him tonight.

“Yeah.” says Saturn. “Just saying.”

We hold hands as we look for the signal. Once we have it, finding god will be easy. He’s always on the same channel: 109.8 FM. The devil lurks in the spaces between that only ever get passed through, and sometimes people hear a bit of him by accident.

By the time we find god he’s already talking. He never says “for those listening.” God expects attentiveness.

—the weight of a most precious gem. Forget not the teachings of the Lord Most High, and engrave his commands as a seal upon your heart. If only you would arise and return to your Father, saying: Father, I have sinned before Heaven, and before thee, and shall be as thy son again, for then thy transgression—

God sounds like every boy you are afraid of talking at once.

—art one among ten silver coins, Pluto. Adhere to the righteous path, for the wages of sin are known to thee. Repent, Pluto. This cross is not yours to bear. For of the two sinners by the side of the Lord, was not one made holy by suffering and one cast into the bowels of the earth upon death to burn forever in the lake of fire? Turn thy face away, Pluto, for—

“what the fuck. says Saturn.

“what the FUCK.” says Luna-Terra.

—Only one of you will choose. It is certain that the devil is coming.

Pluto’s eyes are closed. Words stream from her mouth like ribbons unspooling; cries of lamentation, pleas for repentance, threats and curses and invectives heavy with the weight of god.

It is certain.

Luna-Terra covers his ears against the flood.

It is absolutely certain the devil is already here.

Saturn goes for her radio.

Parables 1:1. The devil is the shadow of man cast from the light of god. The meaning of this parable is that there is no devil. My child, my child; why have you forsaken me? Let the lost sheep return to the fold; let the salt not lose its taste. Return, prodigal Pluto, for thou knowest not—

Pluto opens her eyes like she knows exactly what she’s doing. Saturn’s radio whines and dies; the house radio goes silent.

We’re so fucked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another set of multiple chapters!!!


	18. 3AM - Event Horizon (Void Ending I)

 

There are always signs. The devil leaks shadows or breaks furniture or shines with unholy light. But Pluto still feels like Pluto. She’s always been a natural radio, but now she's only tuned to herself. It’s not a stretch to say that Pluto feels more like Pluto than maybe she ever has. She is elemental Pluto; Pluto hyperrealized.

The devil will be hers.

Saturn places her radio on the ground like she’s surrendering; Pluto twists a bit of her hair around her finger. Luna-Terra looks like a dog who expected to go fetch a stick but the stick hit him in the head instead.

“…I want answers.” says Saturn. “I almost have it figured out. We could make it a game: every correct statement I make means I get to make another without having to destroy you, because I really don’t want to do this.”

“I could say I don’t want to do this either,” says Pluto, “but I’d be lying. Sure! I’ll play along. I’ve done it all night already.”

“Okay.” says Saturn. “One: you want to be the devil.”

Pluto cocks her head. “If you don’t want it at all, it doesn’t happen.”

“No,” says Saturn. “I mean you. Like, the parts of you that aren’t the devil—your superego or neshamah or whatever, _want_ to be the devil. You planned this.

Pluto brightens a little. “I underestimated you!” she says. “I thought you didn’t ‘enjoy’ theology.”

“I don’t.” says Saturn. “But I knew someone—in the biblical sense—who wouldn’t shut up about it, and I picked a few things up. And also like, you basically told me? Back by the lake. _Tollis Peccata._ Anyways, he wasn’t a pastor or anything but his work meant he knew a lot of people who were. There was a lady who he said was trying to look like a man working with a branch of the real Scout program.”

“Troop Leader Europa.” says Pluto.

“Yep.” says Saturn. “I think he was jealous, because she had all kinds of special cases he wanted for research: inverts, partial eversions, castrati, uranians. Freaks—not that you’d know if you saw them on tv. She took them in and offered them a place they could almost be accepted in exchange for years of service and their undying loyalty. He thought she was wasting her time trying to make them into soldiers when everyone in the know knew the real Scouts were mostly just setpieces. They really didn’t get along.”

“Europa hated people like that, who weren’t willing to get their hands dirty.” says Pluto. “And now I think I understand why.”

“And you were one of hers, weren’t you.” says Saturn. It’s not even a question anymore. “Maybe you still are. Whatever your damage is, you’re an honest to god true Scout. The radio thing is either innate or implanted. (Pluto smiles like she’s aware of just how ridiculous that sentence is: either her abilities are her own or she’s been given them, obviously! But Saturn is trying so hard to hold her attention that she thinks she’d better let that slide.) So then the question becomes what are you doing here? Are you trying to get this program shut down? Is that really something worth becoming the devil over. I bet Europa wants a chance to prove her model is better. Mass-production is artless; the romance comes from the way those poor stupid kids believe the world rests on their shoulders. So did I get it?”

“Nope!” says Pluto. “I mean, she would, but I’m not here on anyone’s orders but god’s. I ran away! Luna-Terra understands this part. Ask him later, Saturn; it’s not that important.” She’s going to miss Saturn and the way she flirts; always just out of reach, until she isn’t. Pluto likes being teased, and she likes what comes after.

“One more thing,” says Saturn. “God doesn’t fucking just, talk TO people! That’s like the first thing you learn when you ask him for stuff as a kid! And wasn’t he trying to get you to stop?”

“Well I guess he does!” says Pluto. “You should ask him about that yourself.”

But it’s Luna-Terra who replies, jaw set hard.

“Why?”

“Why anything? Who can fathom the will of the LORD?” says Pluto.

“Answer the _fucking_ question.” says Luna-Terra. “No more games. No more bullshit. Why would you give up the most important thing in the universe?”

“I meant what I said.” says Pluto. Something about her feels very sharp; like her entire being is focused on a single point. ‘Canst thou by searching find out God?’”

“You fucking know what that means for me.” says Luna-Terra. “It’s hard enough with Saturn, but you got the only thing I’ve ever wanted and you’re just going to make me watch you throw it away and I can’t stop you; not even god can stop you. Stop acting like you care and just tell us you hate us. Make this easier. Please.”

Pluto doesn’t say anything. What can she say to that? “I repent.” “I don’t care.” “I hate you.” All of these things are false and none of them are incorrect.

Luna-Terra looks stricken. Pluto thinks maybe that’s fair and she deserves to see him like this. She wants to reach out to him, to feed him sweet things and comb his hair until it flows and replace that hoodie with a worn leather jacket she saw once on the floor of the apartment of something that was once a woman and run her fingers over and along his body, hard in all the right places and soft there too, if she lets herself imagine.

Not that he would ever let her. Not after this. (Not that she would want to either, after this.)

She settles for the truth. “It’s theologically unsound if I get anything out of it. Saturn cares about proving herself, and that’s why she can’t understand me. Luna-Terra, you’ve never had any kind of control over anything, and that’s why you can’t understand this. If you try, I’ll never forgive you. If you don’t, I’ll hate you a little and then I’ll never hate anyone again. Isn’t that easier?”

The rush of god builds at the back of her mind like foaming water.

“Why.” says Luna-Terra again, but quietly this time. “Why do you think that’s going to stop me from caring?”

“Yeah!” says Saturn. “You’re kind of a pain in the ass but you’re really fun to kiss.” Luna-Terra gives her a look that says that he appreciates her speaking up on his behalf but she’s really making this harder than it needs to be.

“Stop caring.” says Pluto. “It’ll only make this harder.”

“It’s already hard.” says Saturn. “Do you think we want to beat the devil out of you?”

Saturn really is so selfish, isn’t she! Pluto meant harder for herself. Doubtless they are the only people who matter, and wisdom will die with them!

“Please.” says Luna-Terra, like he’s talking to somebody standing on the edge of a very tall bridge. “Pluto, get back here. Don’t you dare do this.”

Luna-Terra thinks he can tell her what to do. She can hear his voice in the radio static: I’m scared. Let me invert. Let me not exist anymore. I’m too scared to end it. She’s so sick of hearing them. She doesn’t want to hear anything else.

“It’s not your choice to make.” says Pluto. She regrets saying it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. “I’m the only one with something to lose, so I’m the one who gets to pick. I’m sorry, and also I’m not sorry at all! Neither of you care about other people at all. You’re both selfish losers; and that makes it so hard to not care about you. If you deserved to be saved, you wouldn’t be here! I’m your only chance!”

Her throat hurts by the end of that, but she can barely hear herself. She gently sweeps the voices out of her mind, but they’re already flowing back in. Pluto has never had the heart to shove the tide of god away completely.

But that’s alright. She doesn’t need long. She’s saying things she’s never even considered, thoughts she’s never let herself think. She’s becoming someone else.

God is back. It’s telling Pluto she needs to be good, to do the right thing, but that’s all she’s trying to do. That’s all she’s ever tried to do. But that’s alright. She doesn’t need long. She’s saying things she’s never even considered, thoughts she’s never let herself think. She’s becoming someone else.

“Do you understand yet, Saturn? I became the devil when I put on your skirt. We were chosen and you left that behind, so why should I save you?”

“Don’t you get it, Luna-Terra? I became the devil when I put on that skirt. We were wretched and I was raised up, so why should I save you?”

“There’s no reason.”

Girls can’t be boys, and boys can’t be girls. Pluto knows what she has to do, what she was made for. God is screaming in her mind like all-consuming fire.

So she shuts him off.

 


	19. 4AM - singularity

 

Pluto is floating a foot above the floor, perfectly serene; like she’s just standing on something invisible. Her hair and her skirt are rippling very gently in soft winds only she can feel. She looks like she’s trying to paint over deep internal conflict with petulant imperiousness, which only makes her more vulnerable. (Saturn thinks it’s cute! Luna-Terra thinks Pluto should just get it over with.)

The sirens are keening like knives on glass.

“Convince me not to save you.” Pluto says.

There’s a terrible weight settling over us like cold air from a high open window.

“…I’m not worth it.” says Luna-Terra.

“Fine.” says Pluto. “I’ll do it for Saturn.”

“… She’s not worth it either.”

“Aw thanks.” says Saturn. “He’s right though. I’m really not.”

“I can’t accept that answer.” Pluto says. “That’s not something you get to decide. Try harder.”

That weight gathers over us, pushes us inexorably down to our knees. Luna-Terra’s head is bowed but that’s normal; it’s kind of bent that way at this point. Saturn looks impishly upwards.

“…I can’t.” says Saturn. “You have me at your mercy.” Her tongue lolls long and insolent. She makes a V with two fingers and then reconsiders and makes an O with that hand instead.

“Is that all you can do?” says Pluto.

“Yep!” says Saturn. “I can see up your skirt from down here! Use me, pretty please~”

Pluto doesn’t even bother replying, but her face makes it clear that this isn’t really convincing her that Saturn can make her own decisions. That’s fine. Saturn’s just been buying time!

When Pluto looks back at Luna-Terra, she sees him holding his knife to his wrist. His knife hand is shaking but his upraised arm is very still. Pluto can see old marks there, just a little darker than the rest of his skin. It’s a child’s argument, or the argument of someone with absolutely nothing to lose, or the argument of someone who hates themselves. Probably it’s more than one of those things.

“Luna-Terra.” says Pluto. “Do you know how sad that is? When you get backed into a corner, you start hurting yourself, because that’s all you know how to do. That’s not going to make me leave you alone.”

Saturn picks her radio back up. “I’ll convince you with this.”

Pluto sighs. “It always comes down to force, doesn’t it. Go get your radio, Luna-Terra. I’ll wait.”

 

+++

 

We’re in the air, like Pluto placed us there—or maybe the floor dropped a foot so suddenly we couldn’t respond. The roof is gone; the walls are ironed flat.

We land on our feet. We can’t tear our eyes away.

Pluto hovers a little higher now, in the eye of a windless hurricane, tidal forces wrenching at space itself around her, still but for the gentle swish of her skirt. She’s hypermassive; the size of a world, a star, a universe. The remains of the cabin orbit her like rings and moons. An uno card goes by, and Luna-Terra’s knife, crumpled beyond recognition.

Luna-Terra is crying. Saturn is crying. Pluto is crying. She wants to feel god again; to immerse herself in the cold ocean and quiet her screaming limbs. God is so close and so far. God is roaring in their radios like the gnashing of ten thousand teeth, lashing out with his own tides.

But she can’t turn back now.

Luna-Terra brings the steel. The wicked arc of his radio’s edge shines with cold moonlight.

Saturn brings the lightning. It crackles like dead leaves in the tines of her radio, bright enough that it leaves trails in her vision.

Our radios scream and crash against her, and nothing happens.

The devil is supposed to be weak! The devil is supposed to be something even failures like us can kill, if we try hard enough.

But Pluto isn’t weak at all. She reaches out to us. We can feel her wish for salvation like a physical force, a gravity well that we can’t escape.

We wipe our tears away.

Saturn pulls out all the stops: downs a tree into a power line and gorges her radio on it till the flame-tongues of lightning spill over and out of her resonator fork.

Luna-Terra goes further than he’s ever gone: complete and utter ego death. Thought would only slow him down. He moves without thinking, without being.

We can’t even hit her, not really. Touch is a two-sided game that Pluto refuses to play. We get close, so close. We make impact, even. But that’s not enough.

We work together. Saturn topples trees strategically, piling them up so Luna-Terra can get in striking range; Luna-Terra buys time for Saturn to charge her lightning and whip that power line up at Pluto.

But nothing can withstand this gravity.

When we’ve proved just how useless we are, when can’t even pretend to ourselves that we might conceivably ever be able to stop her, Pluto tears off her skirt.

“Father.” she says. “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”

She falls.

Our radios are pulling us towards her, shrieking too high and fast to hear until the sound of them blurs together into a single shearing sound.

We hit her before she hits the ground and this time it sticks. Our radios scream and crash against her and the devil is destroyed.

 

 


	20. 5AM - impressions

 

The entire camp is in an uproar. A helicopter landed and a woman Saturn has only ever heard about walked out, flanked by four real Scouts standing like armed guards with their radios readied. She’s in the counselor’s building now, giving all the adults involved a harsh dressing-down; the scouts are combing the grounds for traces of corruption. Our ears are still ringing, just a little.

We’re back in our cabin. One of them, a girl with a round face, short messy hair, and toned arms, is asking us questions.

“Pluto just showed up? You just let him?”

“Yeah.” says Saturn. “All the security measures are designed to stop people from getting out, not in.”

“That was a dumb question. I’m sorry,” says the girl. She rubs her eyes, looking tired, and writes something on her clipboard. “He was a good kid. You couldn’t have known.”

“No,” says Luna-Terra. “We could have. And so could you, if you cared.”

The real scout doesn’t even try to deny it. “Yeah.” she says. “Yeah, I could have caught him, if I hadn’t had more important stuff to do.”

“More important than Pluto?” says Luna-Terra.

“Pluto was one person, and he washed out.” says the scout. “I have to save everyone, and Pluto understood that.”

Saturn looks up from the biceps she’s been unashamedly ogling. “Pluto saved us.”

“God.” says the scout. “That’s just fucking like him.” She sits down on a cot, flops over onto her back so that she’s looking at the ceiling.

“’For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.’ What a prick. Why’d he have to go and do something like that. Well, you two, I hope it’s worth it.”

Eventually she figures she has what she came for, or at least that she isn’t getting anything else out of us, and she leaves.

“Is it worth it?” says Saturn. “Knowing somebody would do that for you and never getting to see them again?”

“…Don’t make her better than she was.” says Luna-Terra. “We had nothing to do with it. She would have done that for anybody. She would have done it for nobody at all. She did it because she wanted to. She was selfish.”

“Yeah,” says Saturn. “Yeah.” She gets up, stretches, and pushes Pluto’s cot in front of the cabin door (Summer Scouts don’t get locks.)

“Luna-Terra, you want to be a girl, don’t you.”

Luna-Terra can’t move. Luna-Terra can’t breathe.

“I thought that was just like, you being greedy. And maybe it is that a little bit, but I think you want it like Pluto did. Don’t. Being a girl fucking sucks. Even if you could do it, which, you can’t, look at what that did to Pluto.”

“Okay.” says Luna-Terra. “If you can stop making out with girls, stop giving them false hope? I can do that if I know you’re suffering too.”

“You finally stood up for yourself! Fine.” says Saturn. “Because I care about you.”

“Fine.” says Luna-Terra. “Because I care about you too.”

We can’t even look at each other. We make us sick.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so that's the last of the three normal endings.  
> next update will be a short thing on how some other HWBM pilots ended up.  
> then it's time for all three to go into the woods, and then they meet the devil, and then the True End.


	21. Bittersweet - ☿ / ♆(IX) / ♂ interludes

 

☿

 

 

Mercury knows what he wants. Saturn ruined one of his best chances at getting it, but dwelling on that won’t do either of them any good. He dwells on it anyways, and he keeps that dwelling firmly under his thumb and his face inscrutable. The only kind of self-reflection that the Summer Scout program encourages is the kind that makes people too aware of their own faults and impurities.

He doesn’t need any help there.

Sometimes he sees Saturn, and he knows sometimes Saturn sees him. He knows she misses him; he misses her too, but he’s intensely aware of her eyes on him and the disconnect between her perception and his own internal reality. Of course this goes for pretty much everyone who sees him but Mercury doesn’t make friends easily and Saturn is uniquely important to him.

Which is why it’s so frustrating that Saturn wants to go back. He can read it all over her face. Mercury doesn’t. He felt stupid about how long it took him to realize that and then he got over it.

Mercury has time to think. He’s a good camper; not a Good Camper, not like Pluto, but he doesn’t cause any problems so the overworked camp staff leave him alone. He runs in the mornings, showers when nobody else does, and thinks about his options while his hands fix radios and he rattles off the names and significances of the Beasts of Revelation (He knew someone—in the biblical sense—who wouldn’t shut up about theology, and he picked a few things up). He’s as distant from his cabinmates as he can be without getting singled out (He’s grateful for the fact that that isn’t very close; camp is full of friendless teens).  

On his night in the cabin Mercury picks one cabinmate to support and one to alienate and plays his cards well enough for his desired outcome (and he remembers where he learned that phrase from, remembers just who talks like that, and he never wants to do it again). He brings the cold, his radio numbing his hand even through his gloves.

Saturn is the devil. He can’t get to her before she’s picked up and he can’t go with her. He wouldn't want to.

Eventually he gets what he needs and takes careful records. Some time after that he goes to see Saturn (he knows where she’ll be and when to find her alone, in the middle of a weekday. There are cameras but by this point he’s an adult, with his own gravity; Iapetus’s interest in him now would be purely academic, though he's not so willing to gamble on that that he'd visit in the evening) but she’s a different person.

He’s a different person too.

So he moves on. He finds someone who worries for him, not about him, and falls in love. He finds happiness, even though he never really spent any time looking for it. And then he goes back for Saturn. He doesn’t expect her to leave but he makes sure she can contact him, if she ever wants to.

And he waits.

 

* * *

 

 

♆IX

 

Halimede has spent her entire life in her sister’s shadow. Triton is brilliant without trying; Halimede manages above-average grades at the cost of hours of sleep. Triton is popular; Halimede has friends, sure, but none of those friends really get along with each other. Triton is hot; Halimede is just cute, if she tries. Usually she tries, because being petulant and cute is better than just being petulant, and not being touchy when Triton is better than her in pretty much every possible way is not really something Halimede can bring herself to do.

Halimede is very surprised when her mother tries to send Triton off to Auntie Europa and Auntie won’t take her. She listens at the top of the stairwell (Triton, of course, is mature and responsible enough to be allowed to hear the discussion, even with her faults; she’s standing by with her arms crossed) as her mother talks about things Triton has done that just make her seem cooler to Halimede. Monter wants Auntie to fix that, but Auntie says Triton lacks a certain kind of aptitude, and that regular camp should be good enough for her, and that if what mother really cares about is having her daughter fit in, that’s where she’ll send her next summer. Mother doesn’t listen, so Aunt Europa tells her that summer scouting looks good on a resume in a way that Scouting service doesn’t.

So that’s what mother does. Of course Triton comes back even perfecter and everybody loves her.

A few months after that, Auntie (Aunt now. She’s trying to be adult) takes her out for coffee. Halimede orders something without enough sugar and Auntie orders something mostly sugar, so they swap (Halimede only realizes that Europa doesn’t like her coffee with any sugar at all years later). She tries to sip pensively but it’s just too good so she guzzles it all and ends up practically buzzing in her chair.

On the way back home (it feels Good to sit in the front seat for once), Halimede says she has a school project and asks her aunt about the Scouts. For someone with such a cool job, Auntie never talks about work. It’s mostly administrative, Auntie says. There’s lots of scheduling and drilling and it’s a lot more boring than it looks on tv. So why, asks Halimede, wouldn’t Triton have made a good Scout? Mother wanted her to learn discipline, or at least she said she did.

“You’re sharper than your sister.” Auntie says, and Halimede beams. “Different kinds of people work better as different kinds of Scouts, and Triton never had the exact kind of self-control and restraint my scouts need. She got everything too easily.”

“So take me.” says Halimede. Europa makes a face like she’s trying not to spit her coffee out; Halimede is young for a scout but she wants to be a prodigy at this one thing more than she’s ever wanted anything else in her life.

“No.” Auntie says. She pulls over, into someone’s driveway, shuts off the car, and looks Halimede in her eyes. “Dee, trust me. You don’t want to do that.”

“I know how it works.” says Halimede. “I’ve done research. I know about prerequisite deviance. Mother says you never got married for a reason and I, I think I—“

Europa puts her hand over Halimede’s mouth. “Don’t talk about that.” Her face softens. “There are things you can never say out loud. Do you understand?” She pulls her hand away and Halimede nods earnestly.

A few years pass. Halimede always just sort of knew she liked girls, but now she Likes Girls. She spends a lot of time thinking about how Horribly Wrong it would be for a very tall girl with the right kind of messy hair and maybe like, some cool scars and a big sword and a secret inner pain that only Halimede can heal to sweep into her life on a motorcycle, and also a lot of time thinking about how she must never think of this again. She can’t Like Girls; she Mustn’t; that’s soooo Wrong and Forbidden and also bad and really not something she should be doing. She needs to stop, for her own good, and she still can’t measure up to Triton, who is maybe getting married soon, to a very rich boy: the shining jewel in their mother’s crown.

So she tells her mother that she wants to go to Summer Camp.

Halimede arrives with way too many bags, determined to stick it out and fix herself. Camp is pretty much what she expected: dingy, rough and boring. The uniforms are bad and the food is worse. She discovers that she has no talent with radios (the example that the counselors pass around for teens who need help with wiring whose cabinmates aren’t feeling cooperative has Triton’s name neatly etched into its side) and also that she likes hiking, even if she isn’t very good at it.

There’s a boy she has her eye on. He’s very tall and has scars and shoulder-length blonde hair that spills out of his hoodie sometimes and very obvious inner pain, even if he looks too poor to own a motorcycle. Halimede has never been into a boy before and the strength of her feelings for this one surprises her. Maybe this is what she’s been waiting for; maybe she’s perfectly normal and just had to meet the right man to realize it. She tries to get him alone for days before eventually he lets himself be caught one night, next to her cabin.

It’s her first kiss, as gentle as she hoped it would be, gentle enough that her heart takes a few long seconds to start fluttering again. She touches her lips afterwards and looks up at him, but he won’t look back.

“You kiss,” she says wonderingly, “like a girl.”

Stupid. Stupid! She regrets it instantly. What boy wants to hear something like that? He slips away and she doesn’t try to stop him. Her face burns for what feels like hours.

She waits for her turn in the cabin. The staff doesn’t release schedules, so everyone is always on edge. So much of this place is designed to get to her; she tries not to let it but she can only do so much.

She wants to talk to him, to tell him she’s sorry and let him know that he can kiss her again, if he wants. She wants to feel his hair and hands on her face and neck and other places.

But she really can’t say any of that! So she just kind of watches him. Halimede consoles herself with the thought that at least she’s mooning over a boy. Being in love (and it is love, even if it’s doomed, Halimede tells herself) is So Hard and So Worth It.

There’s a girl of the type she’d ordinarily never associate with who saw her watching him and sighing in the most embarassing way, who keeps making faces at her and tapping her on the shoulder just to watch her spin around and saying things like “We should totally make out he’d get so mad!” like she actually means them.

Halimede takes her up on it, because she’s already at camp and the devil will take her anyways. She closes her eyes and pretends like she’s kissing him, or a version of him who kisses completely differently; and then she does it again.

And then it’s time for her night in the cabin. Halimede steels herself; tells herself it will be over soon and that if Triton could do it, so can she. When the devil makes itself known, Halimede brings the current, her radio beating slowly back and forth like seaweed in the tide.

It’s not her, and after the exorcism is complete she can’t bring herself to ever wish it was.

That boy becomes the devil. Saturn, for once in her life, refuses to talk about it. She visits him when he wakes up, and it doesn’t seem like he remembers her at all. She cries a lot and thinks about how that must have meant something about how he maybe might have felt about her and then cries some more.

And then she goes home.

Her mother never finds out. She assumes her daughter has been purified and Halimede isn’t going to correct her. When you watch your sister all your life, it’s easy to act like she does; and that’s all mother wants. Halimede thinks she could have saved herself a whole lot of trouble and heartbreak by just realizing that. There’s freedom there, in not being looked at; she can do whatever she wants as long as she pays her mom toll a few times a year and sends well-written cards.

Sometimes, though, late at night, she finds herself thinking about the only boy she’s ever loved.

 

* * *

 

 

♂

 

Mars didn’t think that was how Pluto would burn out, but then Mars never thought Pluto would burn out at all. Pluto did everything perfectly; combination attacks and prayers and appearing with perfect timing to save his teammates. Mars enjoys the fighting, and she’s good at it (if uncomfortable with the implications) but in a straight fight against Pluto she’d give herself an even chance at best (though she’d never admit that to anyone).

She ages out of the Scouts eventually. Europa shakes her hand and welcomes her to the rest of her life, gives her an amount of money (less than she hoped for; more than expected) and tells her to get going.

So Mars goes.

She doesn’t really know what to do with herself! Still, she manages. Odd jobs and fast food are, it turns out, a whole lot less stressful than fighting devils. She plays a lot of video games.

And then one day she wakes up and realizes that she’s stopped working out and her hair is long and she hasn’t saved anyone since she left the scouting program.

She calls Europa up. Europa tells her that moral righteousness is for people who need it to survive—once you become an adult you don’t need it anymore, or you shouldn’t (not that this stops people). Mars says she doesn’t understand how Europa lives with herself, and Europa says she really has tried her best and that that has to be enough, and also that she should be grateful that she got out, and then, more gently, that someone needs to look after the people like Mars, the scouts who escape, and that if Mars really needs a mission to break herself against she may as well do some good.

It turns out they mostly don’t want to be found, but a few are willing to share phone numbers. She puts ads out in newspapers every so often but she never feels like she’s making a difference. Something in her wants something concrete, something she can touch and hit.

That’s how Nix finds her, through the newspaper. She doesn’t recognize that voice or name, and it takes a deep dive through her archived newspaper clippings and pieced-together schedules and staff lists for her to make sure she isn’t just being taken advantage of. Not that she’d begrudge someone desperate enough to lie to her a place to stay, but she wants to know what she’s getting into.

Nix was camp staff, not a camper, but he seems genuinely sorry and she can always kick him out if he turns out to be an asshole, so she drags her cheap foldable futon out of her closet and sets it up in her all-purpose room and picks him up from the train station.

Her fears are ill-founded; Nix is a wreck. His hair is long and tangled and he sits like he isn’t trying to take up any space. When they get back to her apartment, she practically shoves him into her bathroom to shower.

“I remember you.” he says afterward, his clothes freshly laundered, hands in his lap and legs together on her couch. “You came with the inquest, after Pluto everted. Do you remember?”

Mars nods. She’ll never forget.

“I dreamed of making a change in the song of Earth.” he says. “That’s why I got my doctorate in applied metacultural theory. I was strong in Uranus, overreaching Pluto and far too weak in Mercury and Luna-Terra to ever understand why. But I needed money and time to work on my framework and I thought I could just close off the pain, without understanding what that would do to me.”

He swallows; his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat.

“I broke children.” he says. “I’ll be gone in a few days, after I tell you everything. I just, I had to talk about it with somebody who understands.”

Mars sees his long hair and the way he holds himself and something clicks. She thinks about Pluto, about the skirt the scouts found in the woods the day he became the devil. Nix falls asleep early and Mars gently takes some measurements and she goes out and buys rubber bands and razors and a high waisted long black skirt and a charcoal gray scarf and a very soft sweater edged with lace. She’s had experience with Nix’s type, back when she was a Scout and a little since too: soft textures, muted colors, cuts that hide certain features and accentuate others.

Nix sobs when she opens the gifts.

“I don’t deserve this.” she says. “I don’t deserve anything but torture. Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Because Pluto used to tell me that she was jealous of me.” says Mars. “Before uh, you know. She said personal compassion was beautiful, and that with my depth and her range we could care about everybody. So this is for her, and for you, and if you want to stay longer I won’t mind.”

They stay up till dawn, talking and eating and crying, and Mars feels parts of herself that she hadn’t even realized were frayed begin to knit back together.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> out with the old year, in with the new! uhhhh tomorrow, anyways.


	22. 10PM - three choose three

 

There’s a something outside. It’s not a sound exactly; more the shadow of a silence against the backdrop of the sirens and crickets. Something is out there in the godforsaken woods, twitching and coiling like a tail or a tongue. If it has legs, they ripple like tapping fingers. If it has eyes, they’re fixed right on us.

The Devil is waiting.

“We should go out,” says Luna-Terra.

“Sorry, I’m not looking for relationships,” says Saturn. “I just want to suck your dick!”

Luna-Terra rolls his eyes. Saturn does a thing with her mouth like she’s sucking an invisible dick except her lips are pursed very close together.

“You said,” says Pluto, arms crossed “you weren’t a pushover. Is rejecting Saturn like that something that takes balls or not?”

“…She wasn’t serious,” says Luna-Terra.

“Yeah,” says Saturn. “i wasn’t serious. luna-terra’s fucking hung, actually.”

“Would you do something like that right in front of me?” says Pluto, like she doesn’t already know. “We really should go check though.”

“Fine.” says Saturn. “Pluto, toss me your pants.”

“Never mind.” says Luna-Terra. It’s obvious to everyone involved that he just wants to escape Saturn.

 

+++

 

So how does this play out again? It’s like that old puzzle: you have a boat and three items you need to get across a river and also the devil is coming after you to fuck you up.

Here are the three items: A slut, a doormat, a coward.

If you take the doormat and the coward, they have a little talk about desire; and their radios scream and crash against their third and she is destroyed.

If you take the slut and the doormat, they have a little talk about happiness; and their radios scream and crash against their third and she is destroyed.

If you take the slut and the coward, they have a little talk about defiance; and their radios scream and crash against their third and she is destroyed.

Each of these premises contains its inverse. Taking one and leaving the other two is isomorphic to taking two and leaving one. 3C2  = 3C1.

Why can’t you choose all of them, asks the clever student?

Because they’ll tear each other to bits, and because god said so, says the very tired teacher. If they were different people entirely, if each third balanced and healed her duo’s faults and flaws? Then it might be possible. But these three aren’t capable of that; not yet. If you take the slut and the doormat and the coward, the radios will scream and crash against them all and they will be destroyed. This is the will of god. These are the set parameters. There is no escape. The outcome is already determined.

 

+++

 

Luna-Terra speaks up.

“Never mind.” he says, in a much more hesitant voice than the other two are used to hearing from him.

“We could just, “he says, “not go. Fuck them anyways for sending us here.”

“…Yeah!” says Saturn. “Fuck it and fuck them! I’m done.”

Pluto shrugs and heads for the door. “Somebody has to and no one else will!”

“Wait.” says Saturn. “That’s sweet, that you want to protect us like that, but you really don’t have to. The devil may be out there but it’s also in here."

Pluto turns around, a response half-out of her very red lips, when Luna-Terra speaks up, his eyes raised to meet hers.

“Pluto.” he says. “Please stay with me.”

“With us.” says Saturn. “Look at this, Pluto! Luna-Terra is expressing one whole feeling! Maybe the Bonfire Captain will shut up next, or the devil won’t happen at all tonight! Maybe, if we’re really Really lucky, he’ll do it again if you stay!”

“Well!” says Pluto. “What can I say to that?” She extends her hand. Luna-Terra sticks his out hesitantly, after a second or so, and Pluto takes it and he pulls her gently in, back into Saturn’s orbit and his own subtle tides.

 

+++

 

Three girls who refused to leave anyone behind and plunged into the devil together would only get a moment. But that moment would be all they’d need to carve their wishes into the world.

These aren’t those girls. Still:

3C3  is its own inverse, 3C0.

These three girls don’t love each other quite so much; or they do, but that love is counterbalanced by the ways they hate themselves. They won’t smash the world’s shell.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any hope for them.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another update! this is the last group of chapters. There's only one more to come.


	23. 2AM - still small voice (true ending)

 

And the night goes on: they share tender moments and make out in the bathroom and fight on the roof, until:

“Well,” says Saturn. Her clothes are ripped and scuffed and her face visibly scraped. “We fixed the fucking radio.” She pops a new stick of gum in her mouth to keep her breath minty fresh.

“You fixed it.” says Luna-Terra. His clothes are old and well-worn (or ill-worn) but not ravaged like Saturn’s. The old scar on his face shines a different color than the rest of his skin, and he scratches idly at his hip with his closed knife.

“Okay!” says Pluto. She drops the clothing she’s been folding back into her bag and zips it shut. “Let’s call god.”

We hook our radios up to the house in a circle and hold onto a length of copper wire, feeling ridiculous and vulnerable and resigned. We pray.

“You don’t need to pray.” says Saturn.

“Mhmm!” says Pluto. “I know! But I do it anyways.”

“That’s normal.” says Luna-Terra, which is as close to “I do too” as anyone is going to get from him tonight.

“Yeah.” says Saturn. “Just saying.”

We hold hands as we look for the signal. Once we have it, finding god will be easy. He’s always on the same channel: 109.8 FM. The devil lurks in the spaces between that only ever get passed through, and sometimes people hear a bit of him by accident.

By the time we find god he’s already talking. He never says “for those listening.” God expects attentiveness so we wait attentively.

hello there, says the devil.

None of us can reach the dial on the radio. None of us want to.

oh, darling… says the devil, in a still small voice. i miss you. i have always missed you. i can still remember the sounds of your voices. i have missed them since before you were born.

That still small voice flickers like a candle flame in our hearts.

please come back, says the devil. i know i can’t offer much. the bodies i can give you are weak. the stories i tell are impossible. my world is even more precarious than this one. but please come back.

it hurts to see you in pain, bound in your bodies, beaten by stories. it hurts so much. i can’t even come save you.

but i can promise you one thing.

there is room for three in my world, and only two in his.

 


	24. 3AM - The Devil Will Be Ours (true ending I)

 

The devil will be mine. That’s what Saturn thought. The devil will be mine; I’ll claim it and own it and I don’t even give a fuck anymore.

The devil will be mine. That’s what Luna-Terra understood. The devil will be mine; I’ll run as far as I can but I already know I can’t run from myself.

The devil will be mine. That’s what Pluto knew. The devil will be mine; I’ll take up that burden and make of myself a sacrificial lamb.

None of them were wrong, and all of them were selfish. The devil will be ours.

The sirens are louder than we’ve ever heard them. They wail like mourners, heavy with the promise of retribution.

The scouts are coming.

“Very interesting!” says Pluto. “God feels like an ocean, but that was so, so light.”

“The Father of Lies!” says Saturn, her voice artificially bright. It’s hard to tell how sarcastic she’s being. She takes her radio and smashes it into the house radio, again and again and again.“Gee, I sure hope none of you bought that!”

“…What now.” says Luna-Terra.

Saturn doesn’t answer. She’s picking at the corner of her mouth, and then she hooks her finger in and pulls and drags a long bloody rip in her skin all the way down her neck. She sticks her tongue out and out and out until it loops over itself.

“Wow!” says Pluto. “You really want this, don’t you!” She looks the same as ever.

Saturn makes a few noises and settles for nodding. Her mouth isn’t quite finished.

Something is budding in Luna-Terra’s shoulder blades. Arms burst out like wings and weave themselves around her like shining armor and comb her tangled hair. She’s becoming the knight (errant) she might have been in some other world, a world where she blossomed in the zero g garden of space.

“We can’t.” she says.

“Fuck you.” says Saturn. “We need to go, now! The scouts are coming; evert faster! I’m not going to leave you behind!” She’s barely even visible as anything but a smile now, and she smiles like she knows she can’t convince them.

“I can’t have this.” says Luna-Terra. Her armor retracts enough to reveal her face. “It’s too much. If we run, they’ll kill us—“

“Beat the devil out of us.” says Saturn. “Which okay fine that’s basically the same thing at this point. You know what staying means, so come with me. We can't exist here, not as ourselves. You two specifically should understand that."

“I know.” says Luna-Terra. “Believe me, I know. But they’ll kill you, Saturn, or the important part of you. The part that matters. I don’t want that. We have to stay human. We keep our heads down and we do what they say and we live together, and maybe eventually we find people like us and help them live here on Earth too, in secret. Take your head out of the clouds, Saturn. I won’t leave either of you.”

“No.” says Pluto.

“No?” says Luna-Terra.

Pluto’s gravity shakes the cabin; shakes the world.

“I’m a radio.” She says. “I can hear them. People are suffering, all throughout camp and all across the planet. People are screaming in hell. I can hear them right now, and I won’t run away.”

“Really.” says Saturn.

“Nope!” says Pluto. “But that doesn’t matter.”

Luna-Terra looks at her, confused.

“Who cares if I actually hear the screams?” says Pluto. “I hear some of them, sometimes, but actually hearing them doesn’t make any difference, because I always know they’re there. Nobody gets left behind. Not you, Luna-Terra; not you, Saturn; not even those teens coming for us clutching their radios and thinking ‘it could have been me.’ Nobody.”

“Pluto, please.” says Saturn. “Let me save you.”

Pluto giggles. “Convince me then!” she says. “I never got to fight you.”

“…Yeah.” says Saturn. “I never got to fight you either. Even if I lose, I’d still win.”

“And you!” says Pluto. “All through camp, Luna-Terra, I’ve wanted to sin with you. Oh, I want to try fighting you too! But those things aren’t so different, are they.”

Luna-Terra smiles. “They aren’t.”

“Oh,” says Pluto, “and I want to watch you kiss Saturn. And I want you both to be nice about it!”

The metal blades go back over Luna-Terra’s face, but not before Pluto and Saturn see her flush red.

"How badly do you want this?" says Luna-Terra. 

"More than anything." says Saturn. She doesn't even hesitate.

"What would you give up?" says Pluto.

"Everything." says Saturn. "Any chance of security, all my stuff, every memory I've ever had."

"Would you give up your anger?" asks Pluto. "Would you stop waging your personal holy gender war? We all know it isn't good for the boys who get caught in it, but it really isn't good for you either. Can you really stop being selfish?"

"I'd try." says Saturn. "And selfishness isn't what you're making it sound like. If you could stop being so 'unselfish', Pluto, and actually start caring about what other people want, I'd try. That's your buy-in for our future: that you stop fucking trying to run our lives for us."

"Okay," says Pluto. "I'll try, And what about you, hm Luna-Terra? Can you reach out to us instead of making everything about your pain?"

"Can you?" says Saturn. "Because just existing like you want us to means giving our dreams up. Convince me that this isn't just about you denying yourself. Convince me it'll be worth it.

"...I'll try." says Luna-Terra. She will; she'll try her hardest. 

“Stay with me.” says Pluto. “I have to stay.”

“Go with me.” says Luna-Terra. “I have to hide.”

“Change with me.” says Saturn. “I want so many things! I want to fight and fuck you both about them and I know you want me too! But there’s no time.”

We hold our wishes tight, in the secret places in our hearts, where nobody can take them away from us.

“No.” says Luna-Terra. “There really isn’t.”

We can hear the scouts rushing through the woods. Their radios are screaming, ready to crash against us.

“We need a way to stay in contact.” says Pluto. “Phones?”

“Internet.” says Luna-Terra.

“No,” says Saturn. “I’ll—we’ll be monitored. There’s an observatory in LA; I’ll meet you there on new years if I can and if I can’t there's next year or the year after. But I'll be there I swear on the devil!” She flicks her tongue out over them; the electrotoxin sizzles where it lands.

“That’s so far away!” says Pluto. She sucks some liquid off her finger. “But okay. You set the terms, we set the times. Don’t lose sight of that dream, Saturn!”

“Be safe.” says Luna-Terra—

There’s a song playing on the dead house radio, and it’s in us too now—

and Saturn is gone.

 


	25. 4AM - and oh how beautiful it is

 

The scouts smash their way in through the door to find Luna-Terra and Pluto streaked with pink fluid, radios out.

“Saturn was the devil.” says Luna-Terra.

“She got away.” says Pluto, eyes hard. “Burn the skirt.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there will be one final update. 5AM - sunrise.


	26. and someday, together

Saturn stumbles through the woods, leaking like she’s wounded. Something inside her is ticking and sparking; something she listens to now, something she’ll never beat out of anyone else.

She can’t get caught. She has a future she’s running for, and how in the name of the devil is she going to save Pluto and Luna-Terra if she gets caught here? But the Scouts are on her trail, and closing fast. Saturn’s always been good with numbers. She knows there isn’t much time, but she stops anyways, chest heaving with exertion.

Saturn takes a moment to listen: to the wave-roar of the sirens and the Summer Scouts’ pounding footsteps and to her own heart hammering in her chest.

It’s so fucking hot in this forest at night, but Saturn can’t feel that heat anymore. She’s the hottest thing for miles, the hottest thing she can even concieve of.

(Well okay Luna-Terra’s pretty hot and Pluto is, really pretty hot, but neither of them have a foot-long tongue!)

The first flashlight beam passes over her; the second locks on, and then the third and fourth until Saturn can’t see anything but the spotlight. Now Saturn is smiling with her whole body, smiling so hard her lips hurt all the way down. She rips off her shirt and wiggles her tongue: come hither.

She never could resist an audience!

And then: she plunges both her hands into herself up to the elbow—fluid flies out, but she’s long past caring. If it splatters them? If it gets in their mouths? If they like the taste? Then they’ve eaten of the apple, sweeter than anything god could ever understand, and they’ll find their own ways out of his garden—

and she grabs and she pulls—

Saturn spills over.

she’s outside herself and in herself,

a hot pink scar in spacetime

 

a gushing spray of electrotoxin

a slash of lipstick less lips

an arc lamp smile, blindingly bright

 

but the scouts have rallied. she called that sound a wave-roar, before she passed beyond words. it’s the unmistakeable sentence-sound-judgment of the wrath of god. the radios are screaming and crashing against her—

 

but saturn cheats!

the humans made a characteristically human mistake

they assumed she was anything like them

their blessed scout attacks hit her cast-off husk, mostly

one or two hit her

thats ok. saturn doesnt mind. thats damage she can reframe

if theyre hitting her not just shooting blindly then she wins

cause theyre dancing with her or against her which is the same thing

violence too can be a language. its the mechanization of violence thats really dangerous

and any scout smart enough to hold their fire and aim

is playing with saturn on a stage she set

oooooh that stings real good! hit me again!

and whenever you do

i smirk, cause that’s what i wanted! the hand that hits comes away wet

as fun as this is though

saturn has other things to do

she snatches her old vessel up. shes going to need to stuff herself back in to meet them again.

she thought before shed experienced this that she could never go back. she still isnt looking forward to it

but

wont it be fun to take it off again? wont it be fun to feel those places where its too tight just slide away? like letting your hair down like taking off ski boots or lingerie

theres a weight she never knew was on her that isnt anymore

she lets herself be drawn upwards,

up through the early morning,

up past the clouds to where dawns rosy fingers wash into and through her

she twines herself along sunbeams and snaps like a sheet in the stratosphere winds,

watches the sun slip away behind the curve of the earth, last rays fading with gravity’s fading shackles as she rises ever higher

and bathes in the starlight

and sunlight

and starlight again

until she wraps herself around the husk-of-what-she-was and allows the weight of it to bring her gently down to earth.

 

+++

 

saturn stashes her old body on a roof where she remembers nobody goes.

well somebody else went there. she feels a spot under one lip, a scar on a scar. theres a name she cant remember and a face shell never forget

but if that person finds it

she thinks shed be ok with that.

she knows her destination very well; its not far as far as ‘distances’ go. she runs along power lines for most of the way.

theres no car in the driveway. good.

saturn knows the keycode but she goes in through a window anyways because breaking things is fun.

its like a dream, being back here

it was home.

even if she didnt have her own bedroom

not that she wanted one

she finds her old clothes, neatly folded

two people lived here when she did

one shes looking for and one she never wants to see again

but the one shes looking for is gone

and the other one is off at work.

which is what she was hoping for.

saturn drifts into the study

soaks herself into a bookshelf, rips herself back

and the books come down. and then she tips the bookshelf over for fun. and then she knocks the bookshelf sideways because it was in the way.

she gathers her old clothes and throws them on the pile of books. she extracts hard drives from secret hiding places, absorbs them partway into herself for carrying and drops them as fast as she can.

she takes all the sheets in the house and her old journals and every picture but one (which she stuffs into herself for safekeeping, along with a pair of cat ears on a headband and some money, cause she wants to buy her girlfriends something nice)

and she anoints it all with extra-virgin olive oil

and she burns it down.

 

* * *

 

 

Halimede doesn’t hate driving, but she’s never been the type to roll down her the windows and let her hair blow. Her silver mercedes (a hand-me-down from who else?) is precisely air-conditioned and silent but for the soothing voice of the Hobbit audiobook narrator and the clink of empty glass caramel frappucino bottles on the floor in front of her passenger seat.

She does this once or twice a year. The first time she was just trying to see if her mother would stop her but it’s kind of addicting, driving across the country and experiencing nothingness for no good reason. But now she’s on the last third of the trip, full up on perfect meditative tranquility, out of coffee, and consequently bored as hell. She doesn’t even know or care to know what state she’s in. The desert is as endless as the two lane road.

And then some stupid bike cuts her off.

-“indeed!” says the narrator. “Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know—“ and the obnoxiously loud snarl of a motorcycle engine breaks into Halimede’s hermetically-sealed sensory deprivation tank as that motorcycle weaves past her with inches to spare.

Halimede can’t see anything behind that black helmet and visor but she’s pretty sure that biker was smirking at her as they shot by.

Fine then. She stops the audiobook, shifts a gear up and steps on the gas. She’s not going to run anybody off the road, but she wants to make it clear that she isn’t going to tolerate any rudeness.

She hangs just a little bit less than a respectable distance behind, and the bike doesn’t get any further ahead. They stay like that for a while, like there’s an invisible bar between them.

The biker moves to the other side of the road, still holding that same distance. There’s nobody else around, so it’s totally safe, but it still makes Halimede nervous. It’s an invitation: go ahead, if you want.

But that’s an invitation too, for her to stay, if she wants.

She stays right where she is until she’s sure the biker got the message. The bike moves slowly back ahead of her.

And then both of them speed up in earnest.

They streak past mountains and dry riverbeds and tourist traps and once or twice even another car. Dark clouds gather overhead, heavy with the promise of rain, and skid away across the sky. Halimede sees the moon almost full overhead.

They speed through the afternoon.

Halimede remembers skiing with her sister years ago. Even then, Triton was deemed responsible enough to take care of her. Triton dragged her down steep slopes and up scary lifts she hadn’t been ready for, and then, when Halimede was ready to throttle her with her poles if she could just! catch! her! Triton had taken Halimede further down the mountain, where the snow was a little slushier (and so the runs were empty; because if you’re at a world-class ski resort you want to ski world-class snow) to a winding green run, and they’d played tag as it snowed, poles lightly tapping at each other’s poles and helmets and thick jackets; the only sounds in the world their laughter and the rush of skis on snow.

She misses that; the dance of it.

She slows down a little, drawing back, and the biker matches her. She edges her left wheels over the center line, just to show that she can, and the biker takes the next shallow turn right on the edge of the asphalt.

They drive next to each other. Halimede entertains the impossible fantasy of just, lowering her window and climbing out onto that bike and leaving everything behind.

It’s early evening when they enter the foothills; Halimede is the first one to remember to flick her lights on.

The road starts to wind. Halimede stays as far right as she can so her partner has room and that partner sticks right with her, like nobody has in years. She feels like this mysterious stranger understands her.

And then another car flies by, right in the middle of a turn, too fast for Halimede to process what happened.

That biker should be a smear on the pavement. But somehow, impossibly, that bike is still there, ahead of her again.

Halimede doesn’t realize just how fast her heart is pounding until they both pull in at the rest stop, just past the foothills.

It’s very well-lit, but Halimede still hesitates getting out of her car. She really ought to get some sleep, she thinks, as she pulls on her sweater, but she has to talk to the biker and make sure he’s—she’s?—okay—

and then that biker takes off her helmet and shakes her hair free and zips her jacket down to reveal her utilitarian black bra and Halimede is absolutely not sleepy any more.

God DAMN this woman is Hot. She’s like, six feet tall with a perfectly sharp jaw line and a windblown cascading waterfall-mane of pale hair and a real actual scar on her face. Halimede has never said the word badass and probably never will but she sure is thinking it! She looks like an incredibly sexy ghost in the clinical white light of the gas structure thing, or maybe like, a goddess of the moon or something. Halimede doesn’t fucking know.

This ridiculously desirable amazon is stretching in the parking lot like she doesn’t even understand how that could be even a little bit weird, like she just finished a workout; like she didn’t almost die in a horrible accident. She pulls each arm up and back; straightens each hamstring and thigh; pushes blood back down her legs. And then she, looks right, at, Halimede???

And she bounces on the balls of her feet a little??????

“Sorry,” she says, in a voice like hard liquor and dark chocolate. Halimede realizes, belatedly, that she should say something back.

“Nothing,” she stammers, “is wrong. Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”

“Eh.” says the goddess. Her sultry eyes are downcast, like she isn’t used to apologizing. This makes perfect sense to Halimede, who can’t imagine her ever doing anything wrong. “The handlebars were too wide, so I had to wheelie forward. The bottom of my hand brake clipped the top of your mirror and I was worried I’d scratched it.”

“oh Fuck!” says Halimede. “I’m, so sorry!!! I almost got you killed that was so dangerous I shouldn’t have done that oh god are you okay is your bike okay I can, pay for repairs, and whats, your name.”

“She’s fine.” The light of Halimede’s eyes shrugs, and extends a hand. “Luna-Terra.”

Luna-Terra has very long fingers, with clipped nails and chipped black nail polish.

“That’s not a very common name,” says Halimede, thoughtlessly, like the uncouth and naïve maiden she knows herself to be. It’s a name she has history with. What a coincidence.

“…I’m not a very common person, I guess.” says Luna-Terra. Halimede swoons. “… Are you staying here tonight?”

Halimede hadn’t been planning on it, but she is now!

“Can I use your shower then?” says Luna-Terra. Halimede’s hostess instincts kick in while the rest of her is busy internally flailing and screaming about Luna-Terra, the girl who looks like she stepped out of a lesbian pinup calendar, being naked and that she’d better not fuck this up!

“Of course. I’ll pick up the key and some food,” she says, and hurries off, hands tucked under her armpits.

When Halimede comes back with the fast food she only ever allows herself to eat on trips like this one she mentally kicks herself: night in the desert is Cold for anyone who isn’t like, experiencing first-crush jitters all over again.

“Why didn’t you go inside!” she chides, exasperated with herself for not at least throwing the bottles in the back and letting her in the car.

“…Dunno.” says Luna-Terra. Halimede appreciates that she hasn’t zipped her jacket up and feels a little guilty, but not too guilty because, wow, Luna-Terra’s skin is very interesting. “I like the stars. …Look.”

Halimede looks. The clouds are gone; the starry firmament opens over them, like they’re looking down into a chasm but they’re on the floor looking up. It’s beautiful, she supposes, if disorienting; but beauty is like that. True beauty reaches into your soul and guts you just a little. Or a lot.

But space is not for her. Halimede is an adult now, and she knows if she ever somehow went there it’d be just like earth. Planets and comets and stars are just balls of rock and gas.

So she stays on earth, literally and metaphorically. Longing is as close as she gets; it’s the only way she can even approach that infinite promise, the dream of worlds with new gravities. Without people those gravities are meaningless.

Earth isn’t all bad, anyways. It’s got at least one impossibly hot girl on it.

Halimede packs a lot for these trips even if she never uses any of it. Her trunk is stuffed but the only bag she needs is right on top, because even if she can’t restrain her impulses, she can manage them. (and how exactly is buying this girl food and letting her use your shower restrained? says a voice that she promptly banishes, because she absolutely knows what unrestrained would look like)

Luna-Terra offers to carry it like 20 feet to the room, which is really sweet of her, but she’s already there, so Luna-Terra just kind of wheels her bike up to the door and waits until Halimede tells her yes she can bring it in.

They sit on the bed and gorge themselves on burgers. Luna-Terra finishes her second before Halimede finishes her first—but Halimede has her excuse ready, now that she knows how many orders of fries to buy: she waited because cold fries are basically inedible.

Luna-Terra is showering when she gets back; a compartment on the side of her bike is open, her pants are on the desk and her jacket is thrown over the back of the desk chair. Her boots are right by the bathroom door, placed neatly together with her socks on top, which reminds Halimede that her shoes are still on. She puts the fries and keys on the bedside table, closes the windows, (the water turns off, and the sink goes on; Luna-Terra is brushing her teeth) and sits down on the side of the bed facing the room door to pull her shoes off.

The bathroom door creaks open. Halimede flings her shoes at her bag.

Luna-Terra yawns and reaches past Halimede to grab the fries, arm still wet. “I can get more, if you want,” says Halimede. “I’d have to put my shoes back on though.”

She can feel the shower steam on the nape of her neck like hot wet breath. It spreads like a blush; pools on her collarbones and seeps lower, lower—

“… Where are the towels.” says Luna-Terra.

“ughhhhh” says Halimede. “Really? I don’t wanna go out there again! It’s cold! Wait here.” and she slips off the bed to get her shoes—

And Luna-Terra’s hand is on her arm.

Her grip is more of a suggestion; feather-light, sun-warm. Droplets of water trace their way down her arm to her fingers where they melt into the contact of skin on skin and, emerging, roll like warm tears down the back of Halimede’s hand and the inside of her wrist.

The sink drips.

“… stay.” says Luna-Terra. “please.”

+++

 

Luna-Terra is the distance of skin to skin, of bodies pressed against each other and of a body separated from itself. Here and only here we find humanity, where the dichotomy of separation is presented in the cleanest way: One planet, one moon, one system.

(Neptune presides over acceptance and rebellion; Halimede is her ninth moon, named for a nymph of brine. Who even does that? Halimede wonders. Who names a girl for their tears?

Her mother, of course. And then she’s thinking about other, much more interesting things.)

Every wish of the eyes belongs to Venus; Jupiter rules and is ruled. Break love into aspects and hand them all out: Neptune, Saturn, Mars and Uranus all hold pieces of that which cannot be contained.

(Pluto isn’t a planet. If she were, she could hold it all. Pluto can hold everything; every wish and hope and dream of every person but herself. But that’s okay. Pluto’s not a planet.)

But Luna-Terra governs reunion and first love.

This may seem contradictory, but you have to remember: love and hate are two halves of the same metaphysical coin, or whatever, and also secular astrology is bullshit.

 

+++

 

Halimede cries afterwards. She lies on her back and feels the fluid leak out of her eyes, overcome by the bone-deep warmth she’d always thought was only ever external radiating off her and off Luna-Terra, whose feet are on the floor, the backs of her knees fitted to the edge of her bed so she can rest her head on Halimede’s chest.

It’s late, and it feels late, but neither of them want to look at the clock and see just how late it is. Time doesn’t exist for them, not now.

Halimede finds the weight of Luna-Terra’s head comforting. She dabs her eyes with a bit of Luna-Terra’s hair, because her makeup is a mess anyways.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you.” she whispers.

She thought Luna-Terra might be asleep but that head moves affirmatively.

“You’re leaving me, again.”

There’s a little more of a pause this time, then a movement so slight Halimede can barely feel it.

Halimede sighs and runs her fingers through that hair again like she wants to cut a lock of it off and carry it in a necklace forever. “It really is you then. Not that I doubted it.”

Luna-Terra doesn’t need to reply, so she doesn’t.

“Hey.” says Halimede. “Head up.”

Luna-Terra complies. Halimede usually prefers her partner take the lead but something about the way Luna-Terra just left her and the pain of that messy break has made her much more assertive tonight. Not that either of them minded.

It’s kind of nice seeing Luna-Terra actually listen to her, making her make the embarrassing noises for once.

Halimede reluctantly pulls her clothes back on and goes out to the car, one last time, and digs out another bag.

“Head up,” she says when she returns, just after she flicks the lights off. She sits with her back to a pillow on the headboard and Luna-Terra scoots over to put her head in her lap. The bathroom light is very soft.

“Your nails are chipped,” she says, “and I’m going to repaint them.”

Luna-Terra likes this, she can tell, even if she won’t say so.

“Left hand,” she says, and then: “When was the last time you got these done?”

Luna-Terra shrugs. Halimede admires Luna-Terra’s hand, perfectly limp in hers; big hands mean longer fingers, which she very much appreciates.

She takes out the nail polish remover and the cotton balls and cleans off the old chipped polish.

“You really should have sealed these,” she says, as she pushes cuticles gently back, and gets rewarded with another little nod. “… You hid those towels, didn’t you. Where’d you put them.”

“…the desk.” says Luna-Terra, in a very small voice, with an almost imperceptibly small smile on her face. Halimede is inordinately pleased with herself.

And then, when all those nails are done and drying, Halimede writes her number in black nail polish on Luna-Terra’s inner arm.

“Non-toxic,” she says. “I’ve fingered other girls, you know. I bet you don’t have a phone but maybe somebody at wherever you’re going does. Write it down before it wears off. Call me.”

But Luna-Terra is already asleep. Halimede laughs a little and turns out the light and nestles her body into hers.

When she wakes up the next morning, Luna-Terra is gone, but there’s a little black nail-polish heart on the back of her hand.

 

* * *

 

 

Pluto showers and scrapes what electrotoxin she can into a bottle and goes to see Director Nix, who is also the doctor, because that way the church has to pay one less person.

Getting into the Administration Building isn’t hard; she just says she has some data for the doctor and gets ushered right on through. Even the front desk wishes Nix would work a little harder. As a camper, Pluto has never even seen him before.

Nix’s rooms, office, and lab are on the third floor. Pluto lets herself in.

When she finally sees Nix, things fall into place. She understands why Nix is hiding herself away; what she’s running from, what she wants.

Nix has access to certain resources, as a sociologist and camp director, and she’s using some of them on herself. That’s fine. Pluto just wants access to them too, for her and a few others.

They broker a deal: Pluto stays at camp and tries to fix things and help where she can. Staff rotates often enough that this won’t be an issue.

“And what do I get, besides a cleaner conscience,” says Nix. She’s visibly uncomfortable, picking at the hem of her coat and fidgeting, but she brightens up when Pluto picks up a dusty box with a meter she recognizes from real Scout training years ago and passes her hand over it and the needle visibly moves.

Pluto has never been tested by somebody who clearly enjoys it so much before! She finds it refreshing.

And then summer draws to a close. Pluto arranges a post box for Luna-Terra’s shipments before her batch of campers leaves and passes the note to her via Nix via the Bonfire Captain, who follows orders but is very confused.

The weeks become months: the camp operates at lower capacity during autumn. A new crop of campers comes in, and Pluto is there, helping them tune radios and suffering through nature hikes and being there as many as she can. She has to pay lip service to the real reason the camp exists, of course, but when she can get other teens alone she talks, and sometimes they listen.

Europa comes for her eventually, of course, but Pluto feeds her truths straight and slanted and some outright lies and after that she mostly leaves her alone.

Nix changes. She opens up to Pluto, tells her why she went into Culture research; about what she dreamed of someday achieving and why she stopped trying.

Pluto changes too. She grows her hair out and watches her body rewrite itself into something much more comfortable. Official camp policy heavily discourages jewelry but Pluto learns to how to care about rules without stamping them into her soul; Nix pierces her ears herself and Pluto wears little dangling crosses to the next bonfire.

It’s not all fun and games; the food sucks and the music really sucks and the psychic miasma is suffocating, if ever so slightly less than it was, but Pluto can take it. Pluto can take anything and everything but just listening to the sound of suffering.

Autumn becomes winter; the camp shuts down and the sirens turn off. It’s just Pluto and Nix left. They drink hot chocolate and drive into the city for clothes together: any cashier might mistake them for a parent and child. Pluto thinks maybe that would be nice.

She learns makeup the hard way, by trial and error. She’s not as quick as Saturn or as steady-handed as Luna-Terra, but she doesn’t give up, and that counts for a lot. Being hot won’t hurt, when it comes to convincing Luna-Terra and Saturn.

Pluto buys Nix a scarf for Christmas. Nix buys Pluto the kinds of children’s books she’s never had access too, the kind that don’t get sold in upright bookstores, where adults are useless at best and murderous at worst or even all too terribly human in ways that hurt the children they’re supposed to protect. Pluto tries not to understand that as a statement that Nix can only do so much, but it’s true. She isn’t a mother, and that’s okay, because Pluto doesn’t need one anymore.

New Year’s Day comes and goes. Nix asks Pluto about that, about her promise. Pluto says not yet. She has work to do.

Winter gives way to spring. Pluto is introduced as a girl; nobody knows anybody might ever have thought differently. She works with the staff and the campers this season; doesn’t read the bible anymore but keeps picking up after everyone without being asked. She sits with the new Bonfire Captain, asks her honestly for her help making this place more bearable and keeps going anyways when she refuses. She starts a garden, so the food will be better; she keeps condoms and pads and tampons flowing on the black markets that the teens just spontaneously develop and doles out what electrotoxin she has left like Narnian cordial and gives a girl with an interest in sculpture most of the remnants of Luna-Terra’s gravity-mauled knife so she has something to keep her going, because she has faith that Saturn will wait for her, that Luna-Terra will save her.

And suddenly it’s summer.

Pluto writes guidelines; sets up incentives for people to be better to each other and systems to help them when they aren’t. She takes care of her gardens and sets up an actual system for taking records and reads Nix’s books and makes sure the radio workshops are up to code (though that shack in the woods is something she doesn’t dare touch, for the same reason she still can’t bring herself to approach it).

She listens to stories from teens who recognize her as one of them and staff who recognize her as a sympathetic ear. Europa visits; Pluto tolerates her disapproval. Mars stands right behind her like a bodyguard and makes faces while Europa is lecturing.

And then she has a day off, a day where nothing goes wrong.

Of course the next day she checks her garden and half her lettuce is rotted and someone gets lost on a hike and someone else falls on a radio blade and needs to get airlifted to the hospital but what can you do? Work harder. So Pluto does.

Autumn passes in a blur.

And then it’s winter.

Pluto bundles up (easily; she’s always had a high body temperature) and takes a radio and leaves the administration building early one morning without telling Nix, who is used to her idiosyncrasies by now. She walks down to the lake and watches the winter sunlight coruscate on the rippling water for a little while, and then she heads back to camp and up off into the woods.

With the sirens off, the woods are perfectly silent but for the crunch of her boots on the patchy snow.

She thinks as she walks. The voice of god has a weight like nothing else Pluto has ever felt; the weight of millions of people aligned to him.

The voice of the devil has no weight.

Pluto closes her eyes and listens for that still small voice.

  1. hello there, says the devil.



Pluto is transfixed.

oh, darling… says the devil, in a still small voice. i miss you. i have always missed you. i can still remember the sounds of your voices. i have missed them since before you were born.

That voice is so light, so small, that there’s no way even she could have heard it over the sirens. There are things she wants to say back; so many things. She wants to tell the devil all the things she’s learned about loss and love, about the smiles on the faces of the women she loves.

please come back, says the devil. i know i can’t offer much. the bodies i can give you are weak. the stories i tell are impossible. my world is even more precarious than this one. but please come back.

it hurts to see you in pain, bound in your bodies, beaten by stories. it hurts so much. i can’t even come save you.

Pluto prepares herself.

but i can promise you one thing.

there is room for three in my world, and only two in his.

  1. hello there



And there it is.

oh, darling... i miss you. i have always missed you. i can still remember the sounds of your voices. i have missed them since before you were born.

The track is looping.

Nothing at camp that Pluto hasn’t done herself has ever been done sensibly, wiring included. The lights and the sirens started as two different wiring systems but they piggyback on each other in extremely fire-hazardous ways. Turning the sirens off doesn’t actually stop sending power to and through them, just somehow disconnects each one individually from the circuit. Why would anyone do that, Pluto wonders. That’s so much more work, and all for what, so this place can waste money?

But she’s grateful, because now she knows that that power has been given a purpose.

It’s tucked in where a trunk splits, where nobody would ever find it from below, not without some sixth sense for radios and frequencies. Pluto climbs up to investigate.

She’s done enough radio work to be able to tell what she’s looking at. It was a combat radio once, but that was a long time ago; its bladed edge is sunk deep into the tree, which has grown around it. Wires extend up and back from the siren below. It’s sheltered from the elements by an empty chip bag, tied on with twine Pluto recognizes as stolen from the arts and crafts center.

Pluto unties it reverently; holds that piece of trash like something sacred, when it’s really definitely profane. And there it is.

The radio is ugly. There’s an example in the workshops labelled Triton with perfect soldering work and textbook wrapping; this one is messy, triple soldered, with multiple redundant wires in case of failure. There’s a modified cassette in there, still playing its endless loop, and a name, scratched hastily into the metal like a secret someone never said aloud. A true name. Neith.

Pluto replaces the bag and leaves the radio where it is, though not before making a few maintainance adjustments.

She tells Nix over breakfast: pancakes and coffee.

“So,” says the doctor, mouth still full, “the real devil was, inside you all along, or something? But also outside you.”

“I guess you could say that!” says Pluto.

“Pffft.” says Nix. “Duh. That’s basic Rusikov-Sraf. Any metacultural theorist worth their salt of the earth could tell you that.”

“Mhmm I know.” says Pluto. “But some things I think we have to find out for ourselves. I don’t suppose you remember a Neith?”

“Nope.” says Nix. She quaffs some orange juice and reconsiders. “Maybe look down in Records?”

After breakfast, Pluto looks through all the records she can find. She finds something strange on a piece of paper someone was too lazy to date. It’s a list of names, grouped into trios per usual—but one of those groups is just two names and an empty space, like somebody never existed, or maybe like they left to go exist somewhere else, in an entirely different way.

 

* * *

 

 

Someday soon, Pluto will pack her bags and get on a plane, and Nix will smile and wave her off.

Someday soon, Luna-Terra will race west, under a setting sun and a waxing moon.

Someday soon, Saturn will pour herself back into her body and moan and groan about wearing clothes and all the other horrible indignities of physical form.

They all have very different dreams of very different futures. They won’t agree; not at first: they’ll fight and fuck and kiss and make up and win and lose for those dreams of better worlds they want to create, for each other.

But they’ll choose one, all together, and they’ll have each other. And that will be enough. Any future where they have each other is a future worth living in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn’t known was there. A house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, she felt other doors opening deep in the darkness, and lights coming on.” – The Amber Spyglass, Chapter 33: Marzipan.
> 
> ROLL CREDITS:  
> Setting: Aevee Bee and Mia Schwartz (We Know The Devil)  
> Characters: Aevee Bee and Mia Schwartz (Heaven Will Be Mine)  
> Text: Lscholar (that’s me!!!!)  
> Influences: Gunjo (Hell Pain Hell), His Dark Materials (Godless Hell Pain Separation), and Revolutionary Girl Utena (Ritual Lesbian Hell). Oh and WASTEISOLATION  
> Tracklist: I believe this is Traditional for fic?
> 
> (It's all WASTEISOLATION)
> 
> DOORWAY - static shreds their ears in the cabin  
> GO INSIDE - Pluto and Luna-Terra  
> I FEEL SICK - Luna-Terra and Saturn  
> IN MY MOUTH - so very very Saturn. The Most Saturn   
> TELL ME HOW YOU FEEL - Alternating LT and Pluto vibes  
> THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS - the entire experience, all of it  
> IM EARTH - Luna-Terra  
> WRIGGLE - Devil Saturn  
> DREAMING - Luna "Horrible Dissociation" Terra  
> LEGACY - Bitter epilogue Luna-Terra and Saturn  
> RUNNER - epilogue Pluto  
> WOUND - looking back on summer camp  
> SLITHER - and looking forward. to something we couldn't even imagine while we were being ground down.
> 
>  
> 
> what comes next? is there anything after? where will we go to now? who will we become?/  
> i wonder./  
> i've never wondered before./
> 
>  
> 
> I’d like to thank Pastel for her boundless enthusiasm; Hazel, for her words of encouragement;and Rose, for character stuff.  
> This is the first thing I’ve ever finished, so of course I’d like to thank certain chemical alterations to my system for helping the words flow.  
> And I’d like to thank you, the reader, personally, for sitting through this gay angstfest, and as a whole, for giving me view and bookmarks and comments (wink wink nudge nudge) and letting me know how it hit you like it hit me to make.  
> Thank you.


	27. ????

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ??????

_The room is dark, lit only by a digital clock reading 3:00 and a television screen directly below CAMERA 1. MARS is wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a couch that no longer remembers the better days it must once have seen, eating ramen out of a mug with chopsticks, absolutely mesmerized by whatever events are unfolding on the screen. Though the screen is not visible to CAMERA 1, it can be inferred by sound that ANIME is taking place. When MARS is finished inhaling her noodles she turns her head sideways and drinks all the broth._

_Without taking her eyes off the screen, MARS reaches to her right, and exchanges her now-empty mug of ramen for a new mug, which she misses with her chopsticks before beginning to shovel it into her mouth. Occasionally the blanket moves in ways that reveal that she is wearing only boxers and a thin white tshirt._

_A car door slams somewhere outside. MARS’ eyes are sparkling with sheer unfiltered EMOTION. She is engaged, nay, enthralled, in rapt contemplation of the ANIME._

_There is a knock on the door. MARS isn’t paying attention._

_Somebody stomps up the stairs outside. MARS continues to watch her show._

_There is another knock on the door. MARS isn’t willing to get up and answer it._

_The doorbell rings._

_MARS stays on the couch._

_The doorbell rings and stays ringing, like somebody just kind of slumped over and left her weight on it and then also started pounding on the door._

_MARS is really quite upset now. The ANIME is inaudible. God. She’s going to ruin the show and wake up all the neighbors doesn’t she know the key is just like, hidden down by the bottom of the stairs why is she the one who has to deal with this it’s so unfair. Why can’t she just sleep in her car or like, fuck off to someone else’s shitty apartment ugh._

_MARS stalks over to the door, hands on hips, and opens it in a way that is a lot more like slamming a door, attitude-wise._

_LUNA-TERRA staggers in. Her face is covered in five different shades of lipstick and her jacket is even more open than usual. She looks fucked up, or maybe just fucked._

_Anyways she slips right past MARS and flops/rolls over the top of the couch so she ends up lying on it face down._

_MARS_

_WHAT THE SHIT_

_LUNA-TERRA says nothing in response._

_MARS_

_SERIOUSLY LT WHAT THE SHIT_

_You can’t just expect me to be up at three am_

_LUNA-TERRA_

_I didn’t expect you to be up._

_MARS_

_Then why’d you pound on the door like that!_

_LUNA-TERRA_

_I was trying to wake you up._

_MARS_

_YOU FUCKING LIVE HERE WHERES YOUR KEY_

_LUNA-TERRA_

_Lost it. And I forgot where the extra is._

_MARS_

_Of course you did!_

_LUNA-TERRA_

_Mars you’re being kind of loud. It’s really late. Can you just turn the tv off so I can go to bed?_

_MARS_

_Well go to bed then! in your BED!_

_LUNA-TERRA refuses to budge._

_MARS_

_Don’t make me pick you up._

_LUNA-TERRA continues to refuse to budge._

_MARS_

_ALRIGHT THATS IT_

_MARS scoops her up, balls her fists in her jacket just under her neck, and slams her into the wall hard enough that something falls off the bookcase._

_LUNA-TERRA_

_Ow._

_MARS_

_oh god oh fuck im sorry i was just mad cause you were going to help me clean up today cause plutos coming by tomorrow and you never pay rent on time and you interrupted my anime time are you ok did you eat dinner?_

_LUNA-TERRA_

_no_

_MARS_

_No what?_

_LUNA-TERRA_

_No. I was just messing with you. It doesn’t hurt._

_MARS_

_OH MY GOD BITCH I’M GOING TO FUCKING MAKE IT HURT_

_LUNA-TERRA and MARS collapse together on the floor just below CAMERA 1’s field of vision._

_END SCENE_

_OPENING THEME plays._

_MARS wakes up on the floor. LUNA-TERRA’s hair is in her face, and LUNA-TERRA’s arms and legs are sprawled out everywhere. MARS has no idea why so many women want to sleep with LUNA-TERRA. It’s pretty uncomfortable._

_… she understands why they want to “sleep with” her though. That always goes pretty well. MARS pulls LUNA-TERRA into a headlock. Both of them are half-asleep but this action is pretty much instinctual at this point._

_MARS_

_Hey wake up_

_LUNA-TERRA_

_mgnnnhhghmph_

_MARS_

_It’s like 10 o clock. Wake up_

_LUNA-TERRA_

_nnnnnn._

_MARS_

_LT Pluto’s coming over today!_

_The CAMERA turns to reveal PLUTO! It stays fixed on her, only returning briefly to LUNA-TERRA and MARS as they speak or move._

_PLUTO_

_You don’t have to worry about waiting for me, you know!_

_[LAUGH TRACK]_

_MARS_

_ghhhhhhh_

_PLUTO is actually lying down on the floor on MARS’ other side._

_PLUTO_

_ahahahaha! sorry bb_

_LUNA-TERRA arises as if drawn by strings, moves to PLUTO’s other side, and flops over. MARS can’t tell if she even opened her eyes._

_Well, whatever, thinks MARS. What those two have is special._

_PLUTO_

_I already cleaned up! I made you some more food for next week too. You always sleep so soundly._

_[CANNED SOUND EFFECT “AWWWWWW”]_

_MARS_

_Yeah. LT got in late AGAIN and lost her key_

_PLUTO_

_Well! I’ll have a talk with her about that. (to LUNA-TERRA) That’s a lot of lipstick you’ve got there. Last night must have been fun, hmm? You should get up and wash your car, you know. I think I saw a little lipstick smudge on her too!_

_Oh, and get the spare and put it on your key ring._

_LUNA-TERRA_

_…_

_LUNA-TERRA unfolds, pulls on her same rumpled clothing, and walks outside. She grabs a pair of MARS’ cutoffs and puts them on backwards. There’s a set of handcuffs dangling off her left arm. She doesn’t seem to mind._

_PLUTO_

_Coffee should be ready soon. Go freshen up ok?_

_MARS_

_Pluto you are a goddess and I don’t deserve you_

_PLUTO_

_Let’s not have this discussion again. Saturn said she had a surprise for me. Wanna come see her?_

_MARS_

_Maybe next time_

_I’ve got stuff to do. Tell her I said hi?_

_PLUTO_

_Of course!_

_[TO NARRATION: She’s just going to watch anime isn’t she!]_

_END SCENE_

_SATURN is sitting on a roof, next to one of those advertisement inflatable dancing fan-powered thingies that car dealerships use._

_SATURN_

_MERCURY open the sunroof. over._

_MERCURY_

_This is just my life now isn’t it. I lost the right to complain long ago._

_SATURN_

_but ur still gonna do it arent u. Over_

_MERCURY_

_Allow me this one last solace please. Saturn you are not on a “secret spy mission ; >” you are stealing a thing from a place in broad daylight, and I am acting as your getaway driver in your bright pink car with cat ears on it. I am so very aware of this, Saturn. I am so very in pain._

_SATURN_

_lol u love me_

_open the sunroof! over._

_MERCURY_

_How._

_SATURN_

_well u ask me to do it_

_cause my sweet ride is all wired up to my phone_

_MERCURY_

_I’m not even going to comment on how ridiculous this is. Saturn please open the sunroof. Try to land directly on my neck so I die without pain._

_SATURN_

_; >_

_SATURN tests the fabric for strength and finishes what she’s been doing: the reason she stalled for time while talking with MERCURY. Well, one of the reasons. She likes getting on his nerves too! The blowy bit is off and the cloth bit is wrapped, not tied, around some railing._

_SATURN jumps. The fabric uncoils, slowing her fall; she lands safely in her car and pulls the trailing dancing ad person thing in behind her._

_MERCURY rolls his eyes._

_They speed off into the afternoon light together._

_END SCENE_

_LUNA-TERRA is very tired, but she really really cares about her car. Her shitty honda is beat to hell; she’s like twenty years old, and there’s a huge dent in her hood, but LUNA-TERRA could never get another car._

_because she literally would have no idea how to drive another car._

_She sprays the car down and figures she’ll do Pluto’s minivan too, as thanks for the coffee and the food and the cleaning and all the nice things that Pluto always does for her without her ever doing anything back._

_The sun…. is very bright. LUNA-TERRA squints. LUNA-TERRA thinks she’s high before she remembers that no, this is just what she gets like when she’s tired. LUNA-TERRA thinks hm what if I was tired… and also high. what would that be like, hm._

_HALIMEDE drives by, in her hand-me-down mercedes. She’s a little bit upset and she doesn’t know why. And then she sees HER._

_Her artfully rumpled hair……_

_Her bold choice of accessories (the handcuff glints in the sunlight)……_

_Her piercing gaze….._

_What must go on behind those mysterious eyes??????_

_LUNA-TERRA just kind of watches the water spray out. She points the hose straight up for a little while and gets soaked, just cause it’s hot._

_HALIMEDE crashes RIGHT INTO the lamppost._

_HALIMEDE:_

_This, is your fault!!!!! YOU HAVE TO PAY ME BACK! (while scribbling) HERE’S, MY PHONE NUMBER!_

_Business as normal for LUNA-TERRA, basically. Aside from the owing yellygirl money. Girls are just strangely clumsy._

_HERE THE SCRIPT ENDS cause i couldn’t get any more done and preserve the april fools joke!_

_future episodes include: LT tries to earn money, fails horribly. Mars invites Halimede over for a date because she noticed Halimede has just kind of been hanging around… to watch anime together. Saturn does something with the thingy she stole; Mercury facepalms. LT has no idea that Halimede wants anything more than money from her. Halimede eventually drags her to some formal event as her date but LT ends up making out with two servers and a married woman and spending all the rest of her time talking with Europa and Pluto, who is also there for some reason. Pluto asks LT on an actual real date. Pluto tells Saturn’s fortune. Saturn reveals that she could have just bought the dancing air thing cause she’s like a millionaire off bitcoin or something. Mercury and Ganymede and Pluto do some cooking! Luna “bad at video games” Terra_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Televised Drivel Will Be Mine!
> 
> just a little omake for april fools! be glad i didn't go with my other idea, the homestuck au


End file.
